President Obama

by Jeremy Leaming

Under increasingly outrageous attacks from the National Rifle Association, President Obama announced what The Huffington Post describes as “the most sweeping effort at gun control policy reform in a generation.”

The president called for expanded background checks to include those obtaining guns from private sellers and gun shows, a ban on military-style assault weapons and armor-piercing bullets and a limit on high-capacity ammunition magazines. He also vowed to use executive orders to help stem gun violence.

“In the days ahead, I intend to use whatever weight this office holds to make them a reality,” Obama said. “If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.” (The White House’s website includes more information about the proposals; click on picture for video of president’s remarks.)

The administration’s proposals follow New York’s enactment of some of the nation’s toughest measures to curb gun violence. Among other actions, the NY SAFE Act, signed into law by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, bans assault weapons and magazines that can hold more than seven rounds and requires instant background checks on all ammunition purchases.

As noted here, and by The New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, it is not only the NRA that is ratcheting up its attacks on efforts to curb gun violence. Extremists have jumped into the fray threatening violence over efforts to enact new gun control laws. As Blow wrote, they are employing incendiary language to stir up fear that the government is on the verge of trashing the Second Amendment and confiscating guns. He cites several examples, such as Fox News analyst Andrew P. Napolitano, who claimed that the Second Amendment was created to “protect your right to shoot tyrants if they take over the government.”

Regardless of what extremists think of the Second Amendment, the Supreme Court has recognized an indiviudal right to own guns, but not it is not an unlimited right. Constitutional law expert Geoffrey Stone pointed out recently in a piece for The Huffington Post, that the Supreme Court majority in D.C. v. Heller, stated “the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” and went on to note a string of common sense gun regulations that does not run afoul of the Second Amendment.

by Jeremy Leaming

It can be difficult to follow with great interest the machinations in the nation’s capital, especially with divisive, often ridiculous debates that unfold and then are taken to a whole new level by loud pundits dominating airwaves. But when cynicism sets in, as it has within parts of my family, there’s almost no room for serious, calm conversation about policy that is actually being advanced in the confines of the beltway.

Over the winter break I had the great fortune of seeing three of my brothers, two of whom I rarely get to see anymore. One brother, who has veered from libertarianism to socialism, has written off the entire political process. President Obama is a tool of Wall Street, it would not have mattered had Mitt Romney won the White House, they both represent the same interests, he would say. He scoffed at the Affordable Care Act – no public option, no expansion of health care to the needy – and at the extension of unemployment benefits that has occurred under the Obama administration’s watch. In my brother’s mind the entire system was bought by big corporations a long time ago and they pull all the strings of both major political parties. But I wasn’t all that surprised – he’s been regurgitating the late comedian George Carlin’s stinging, though simplistic, lines about a broken American government for many years now.

The reality is that the American political process is messy, incredibly divisive and often terribly exhaustive and inadequate. But the constant carping about how bad politicians are is also tiring and irrelevant. When hasn’t our democracy been a messy, maddening affair? Sure there have been respites, but they often don’t last long. It’s a fairly large country, and regardless of Carlin’s jabs, we do and have had some remarkable politicians and heroic leaders for equality and civil rights.

And regarding the Obama administration’s first term, a little research would reveal that it is wildly over-the-top to blast it as a tool of big business. As The American Prospect’s Jamelle Bouie notes, Obama’s first two years in office “are a good case study of what happens when Democrats have control of the federal government – they try to expand it. In those two years, Democrats greatly expanded the welfare state with a new, quasi-universal health-care program, funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to infrastructure and clean energy research, and implemented a host of new financial regulations. There’s a reason Time correspondent Michael Grunwald called his book on the stimulus The New New Deal – in both size and scope, the activity of Obama and the 111th Congress resembled that of FDR’s first term.”