The politics of plastic straws
Last week in Nevada, we asked the waitress not to give us straws in our soft drinks. The drinks didn’t need to be stirred, and we didn’t need to waste more plastic that ends up in a landfill or a floating trash archipelago in the ocean. “Oh, you’re one of them,” said the waitress. We could only conclude that “one of them” meant a hippie liberal environmentalist who should be mocked for wanting to conserve our resources. We concluded that our waitress is a conservative who might be brainwashed by Republican talking points from Fox News and other sources that sheath their pro-corporate messages behind a veil of “individual freedom” and an “us versus them” mentality.
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Mayors against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have joined forces to form Everytown for Gun Safety, a new group dedicated to fighting the National Rifle Association to campaign for sensible gun laws. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is putting his name, and at least $50 million of his money, into Everytown’s campaign.
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Empty stage for empty suits at CPAC 2014
Dispatches from the 2014 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are coming in, and they’re not pretty. The CPAC conference is being held at the Gaylord Hotel (oh, the irony) in Maryland, and thus far has been a showcase for the Republican Party’s cultural symbols of God (love ‘im), Guns (love ’em) and Gays (hate ’em).
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In the current gun violence debate, the National Rifle Association and its supporters often cite the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for their opposition to sensible gun safety laws. However, as a guest poster recently wrote here, such a view falsely turns the Second Amendment into a “super right.” In fact, most individual rights under the U.S. Constitution, including the Second Amendment and other amendments in the Bill of Rights, are not so absolute; rather, they are subject to reasonable limits. Here is a brief and partial list of examples:
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Messaging Matters is pleased to present this guest post from Kenny Pick, creator and host of the “Turn Up the Night with Kenny Pick” political talk show. Kenny writes here about the conservatives’ erroneous treatment of the Second Amendment:
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Like many Americans, I’ve been thinking long and hard about the epidemic of mass shootings in our country – Desperately trying to grasp the reasoning behind the hyper reaction of 2nd Amendment purists regarding gun control. It seems that the NRA, Conservatives, some gun owners and manufacturers believe the 2nd Amendment guarantees what I’ve started referring to as a ’Super Right.’ A right that supersedes all others out of a selfish belief that there should be no limitations on the ownership of any type of weapon. It strikes me that every reasonable American should be comfortable finding a happy medium restricting what arms we all have the right to bear; Somewhere between a pocket knife and a doomsday device.
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Another six months, another tragic shooting. The Aurora, Colorado theater shootings were the 22nd such incident since and including the 1999 Columbine shootings. In the mainstream corporate media, especially the television and cable “news” networks, we hear the cliche “our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of this tragedy.” In addition to that sentiment, now is when we should push for real solutions to America’s gun violence epidemic, such as strengthening the nation’s gun laws. Call it the “Gun Law Shock Doctrine.”
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