Tucson shooting and the predictable Congressional response begins

Tighter Gun-control Laws A Long Shot
(NewsCore) - The Tucson shootings have renewed an effort among Northeast lawmakers to strengthen federal gun-control laws, but a partisan climate and an influential gun lobby mean that talk may be as far as it gets, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. On Tuesday, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), whose husband was killed by a lone gunman in a 1993 Shooting Spree, said she would introduce Legislation to reinstate a ban on high-capacity magazines like the one used by the Tucson shooter. Rep. P...

Rep. King Explains His 'Thousand-Foot' Gun Restriction
After huddling with detectives and security experts over the weekend, Rep. Peter King, a Long Island Republican, decided to respond to the Tucson tragedy with a legislative proposal: make it illegal to carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a federal official. In an interview with National Review Online, King explained his rationale and defended the measure’s constitutionality, calling it a “reasonable restriction.”  King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committe...

Tragedy Renews Debate on Gun Control Law
The tragedy in Arizona is renewing a heated national debate on Gun Control. Those who want stricter laws are using the shooting to make their case. Saturday's shooting rampage in Tucson that killed six and wounded 13, has Democrats in Washington calling for stricter limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines. Suspected shooter Jared Loughner's pistol carried 33 rounds. "There is no reason for a citizen to have these large capacity clips," Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., said. "Police, militar...

Republican Peter King Offers Sensible Gun Control Legislation
It’s pretty simple. No guns within 1000 feet of a federal politician. This means that those folks who feel the need to exercise their 2nd amendment rights won’t be allowed into political rallies any more. Good. The National Review asks King some leading questions… King, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, acknowledges that his Legislation, if it had been on the books, might not have prevented the attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D., Ariz.) and others. “...

Rep. Peter King Defends Proposed Gun Control Law
Get alerts when there is a new article that might interest you. In response to Saturday's Shooting Spree in Tucscon, Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) has announced that he's planning on introducing Legislation to make it illegal for American Citizens to knowingly carry a firearm within 1,000 feet of a member of Congress. King told THE Weekly Standard over the phone this afternoon that his proposal came out of discussions he had with New York police over the weekend. “If [Rep. Giffords] had had a ...

Kings Gun Ban Plan Wont Make You Safer
The Daily Caller is reporting that Rep. Peter King (R-NY) “will introduce Legislation to ban the carrying of any firearm within 1,000 feet of what he described as ‘high-profile government officials.’” Of course, such Legislation will do absolutely nothing to stop criminals and deranged psychotics, such as Murder suspect Jared Loughner, from getting and carrying guns to commit murder. Criminals and deranged psychotics, after all, by definition break the law. And they ob...

Do We Need Gun Restrictions For The Mentally Ill?
As always happens after a shooting tragedy the nation is about to go through another round of debating Gun Control laws. One facet of that debate is whether or not the mentally ill should be allowed to buy guns. As the Associated Press reports, there were a lot of indicators for Jarred Loughner’s mental problems, but none of those indicators stopped him from being able to buy a gun. Tucson, Ariz. — Jared Loughner had trouble with the law, was rejected by The Army after flunking a dru...

N.C. gun laws might prevent a shooting like that in Tucson, group says
Gun control advocates say North Carolina’s limits on gun purchases reduce the likelihood of the type of rampage that erupted Saturday in Tucson, Ariz., but they are concerned that those laws may be eased by the new Republican-led General Assembly. “We have a lot of fears that in the next two years there will be attempts to weaken these Gun Laws,” Roxane Kolar, Executive Director of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence, said Tuesday. In North Carolina, anyone seeking to purcha...

Glock Sales Surge After Massacre
Bloomberg: After a Glock-wielding gunman killed six people at a Tucson shopping center on Jan. 8, Greg Wolff, the owner of two Arizona gun shops, told his manager to get ready for a stampede of new customers. Wolff was right. Instead of hurting sales, the massacre had the $499 semi-automatic pistols — popular with police, sport shooters and gangsters — flying out the doors of his Glockmeister stores in Mesa and Phoenix. “We’re at double our volume over what we usually do,” Wo

Christianity and Gun Control
In the wake of the horrific massacre in Arizona Saturday, there are calls to renew restrictions, some of which lapsed when Congress permitted the federal assault weapons ban to expire in 2004, on certain types of weaponry, particularly the high-capacity magazine used by the Arizona shooter. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY), whose husband was murdered in a 1993 rampage on the Long Island Railroad, plans to introduce a measure in the House, and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in the Senate. The General B...

Republican Wants To Ban Guns Within 1,000 Feet Of Members Of Congress
This is going to have the same problem that Gun Free School Zone Acts of 1990 and 1995 had. You cannot remove someone’s 2nd amendment right to keep and Bear Arms just because they live near a school, and I’m not sure that simply being near a member of Congress is enough to remove those rights either. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), one of the few pro-gun control Republicans in the House, wants to make it illegal for someone to knowingly carry a gun within 1,000 feet of certain high-ranking...

Peter Kings Outlandish Gun Control Proposal
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) will introduce Legislation that would ban guns from being carried within 1,000 feet of a Federal Government official. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, one of the nation’s more high-profile pro-gun control figures, supports the bill. He added some other measures he would like to see the President adopt, including overhauling the federal Background Check system, better information-sharing in Background Check databases, and actually appointing a head of the ATF ...

Congress readies new gun-control bills after Gabrielle Giffords shooting
Congressional advocates of Gun Control are preparing Legislation to renew a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines of the sort suspected used in last Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz. Arizona shooting: How safe are members of Congress? Such a ban was in effect between 1994 and 2004 as part of a ban on assault weapons, which also expired. Since then, clips such as those allegedly used by suspect Jared Loughner, which contained more than 30 rounds, have been available for purc...

Poll: In the Wake of Arizona Shootings, Americans Split on Gun Control
(Credit: CBS) CBS News Poll analysis by the CBS News Polling Unit: Sarah Dutton, Jennifer De Pinto, Fred Backus and Anthony Salvanto. In the wake of Saturday's shootings in Tucson, Arizona, Americans are split over whether Gun Control laws should be made stricter, according to a new CBS News Poll. According to the poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that Gun Control laws should be more stringent in the wake of the Arizona shootings. Meanwhile, 36 percent believed the laws should remain the ...

New gun control legislation in Congress unlikely
Washington (CNN) - Accused gunman Jared Lee Loughner opened fire with a gun using a magazine holding up to 30 bullets before he was tackled while trying to reload. Some Democrats in Congress argue such high capacity magazines should not be legal, and are renewing their push for a ban. "That enabled him to do the kind of damage that he did. There is no earthly reason for these weapons to have that kind of bullet capacity," said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey. In 1994, President Clinton signe...

Congressional leaders lay blame for Tucson killing
Partisan representatives and their aides have slung Rhetoric over the circumstances that led to the Murder of 6, and the wounding of 14 more, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords, last weekend.  While Obama assured the country that “the perpetrator of a heinous crime” would be brought to justice, Democrats and Republicans slumped into their comfort zone.  Most media outlets have concluded that Jared Loughner, the man who held the gun, is mentally unstable, yet politi...

Media Matters Boehlert Links Tucson Shooting to Rush, Fox News and Breitbart
Behold, the logic of the left: "No one is saying that they are responsible for what happened in Arizona, but they appear to have no regrets whatsoever in terms of what they have done to the political discourse in this country." For the record, the oblique reference Mr. Boehlert made can be seen here in context. The analogy refers to President Obama's seeming willingness to allow Democratic Congressman to lose re-election for the sake of getting his Health Care Legislation passed. (A pr...

House members want added security after Giffords shooting
House members will return to the Capitol on Wednesday for the first time since the Tucson, Ariz., shooting rampage that nearly killed colleague Gabrielle Giffords, and they are demanding improved protection ranging from office security cameras to the installation of a plexiglass barrier over the House floor. Members will meet Wednesday with the U.S. Capitol Police and the sergeant-at-arms to discuss security issues in the Capitol and at home in their own districts, which is where Giffords, a De...

Democrats Scramble To Exploit the AZ Shooting With Anti-Gun And Anti-Speech Legislation
The nation is still reeling after the horrific Mass Shooting in Arizona this weekend, which left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life, multiple bystanders injured, and six dead, including a nine-year-old girl and a Federal Judge. People were clamoring for answers, and the left wasted no time blaming the tragedy on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Once the shooter was identified, it quickly became clear that Jared Lee Loughner was an anti-government, anti-religion nut with no discernible t...

Democrats two-fold agenda in aftermath of Arizona Shooting
Democrats in the aftermath of the Arizona massacre in which Jared Loughner went on a shooting spree, killing six innocent by-standers and critically wounding Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, immediately defined their agenda: blame conservative pundits and the Tea Party. But casting the blame on Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News is only part of the agenda of the far left Democrats. Let it be known Democrats have a two-fold agenda: Democrats Agenda #1: Shut Down Free Speech Wh...

Democrats Scramble To Exploit the AZ Shooting With Anti-Gun And Anti-Speech Legislation
The nation is still reeling after the horrific Mass Shooting in Arizona this weekend, which left Rep. Gabrielle Giffords fighting for her life, multiple bystanders injured, and six dead, including a nine-year-old girl and a Federal Judge. People were clamoring for answers, and the left wasted no time blaming the tragedy on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. Once the shooter was identified, it quickly became clear that Jared Lee Loughner was an anti-government, anti-religion nut with no discernible t...

Gun Control and Individual Responsibility
Is it time for stricter gun-control laws in light of the Arizona shooting? Or would it be an overreaction to an isolated incident? Except as it pertains to international or interstate shipment, gun safety Legislation belongs properly to the states, not to the Federal Government, and state laws vary to reflect local circumstances. Over the past two years the Supreme Court has made it clear that the Second Amendment right to keep and Bear Arms is an individual right, but that states may ...

GOA's Larry Pratt Says He Supports Legal Residents' Right to Keep and Bear Arms
On Friday I noted a Fox News story that said Gun Owners of America Executive Director Larry Pratt was critical of the ACLU's challenge to a South Dakota law that makes U.S. Citizenship a prerequisite for a concealed-carry permit. The plaintiff in the Lawsuit, Wayne Smith, is a permanent legal resident who was born in the U.K. but has lived in the U.S. for 30 years. "If the guy wants to enjoy the full benefit of residing in the United States," Pratt told Fox News, he should "become a citizen." P...

Quigley: No way to make lawmakers safer while talking to public
One of the biggest gun-control advocates in the House said there wasn't anything that could be done to make members of Congress safer. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) said Tuesday on MSNBC that he just didn't think there was any solution to make House members safer while giving the same level of access to the public. "I just don’t see that there’s much they can do, but the 435 members, as you say, are constantly in motion," Quigley said. To a certain extent, we’re at the mercy of the public.

About that Republican who supports gun control ...
Ryan Grim at Huffington Post reports: Rep. Peter King, a Republican from New York, is planning to introduce Legislation that would make it illegal to bring a gun within 1,000 feet of a government official, according to a person familiar with the congressman's intentions. As I explored in a piece today, the chances that Gun Control Legislation will pass through this Congress, even in the wake of the Arizona Mass Shooting, are slim. But still, it's worth considering King's proposal. And if th...