What do you do when you see a bully on the street, beating up on the less fortunate? You take on the bully.
Today's bully is the NRA, and the right-wing hate they throw at anyone who fights to put preserving American lives over the Wayne LaPierre's slush fund. Thread:
Today's bully is the NRA, and the right-wing hate they throw at anyone who fights to put preserving American lives over the Wayne LaPierre's slush fund. Thread:
1/ First, it's true I said right-wing hate. I don't want this to be partisan. I don't want to be partisan. But just because a bully is partisan doesn't mean you shouldn't take them on.
2/ As @LeadershipNP has shown, the NRA overwhelmingly dominates all right-wing political giving. No one else on the right comes close, and no group on the left matches their scale. 
3/ That means that for all practical purposes, you cannot win elected federal office as a member of the @GOP without swearing obedience to the NRA - and anyone who dares call out the NRA's nonsense will be attacked by the worst elements of the far right.
4/ So we either choose to let Americans die, or we politicize this fight. I choose the latter.
5/ Now some statistics. First, the US has more guns than people. If we wanted to give every American a gun (and only one gun) we'd have to take AWAY 40 million guns. telegraph.co.uk/travel/maps-an…
6/ We are, in fact #1 in per capita gun ownership. If our goal was simply to get to the #2 country in gun access, we would have to take AWAY 121 million guns.
7/ If our goal was to get to be #3 - that is to say, to live in a country where it is just as hard to get a gun as it is in Yemen, we would have to take AWAY 190 million guns.
8/ In other words, you simply can't argue that any American's right or access to guns is in any way constrained. We have more guns than cars. That is excessive, and obscene.
9/ But what about the 2nd amendment? Well, read it. That part about a well regulated militia wasn't there accidentally. And then read Justice Stevens' excellent dissent in the Heller case. law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-…
10/ Yes, that wasn't the majority opinion. But you know what? Some times the Supreme Court gets it wrong. Just ask Dred Scott. And last time I checked, I represented a co-equal branch.
11/ The consequence of having too many guns is that too many people get shot. And 60% of all the gun deaths in the US are by suicide. pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019…
12/ The US is not dramatically more prone to mental health and depression than other countries, nor are we particularly exceptional in the number of suicide attempts. But our excess of guns makes suicide attempts much more successful in the US.
13/ (That last table from Case & Deaton's magisterial & depressing work on "Deaths of Despair": brookings.edu/wp-content/upl…)
14/ It should be noted that most gun homicides are not at mass shootings, even though mass shootings stoke more public attention. But let's talk about those mass shootings for a moment:
15/ First of all, perhaps the only good thing about COVID is that it slowed down the rate of school shootings. It turns out it is politically easier to keep kids out of schools than to keep guns out of schools. Thanks, NRA. chds.us/ssdb/incidents…
16/ And do you know what the best predictor is that you're going to be a mass shooter? That you're a white male with a history of domestic violence. businessinsider.com/deadliest-mass…
17/ Not foreigners. Not Muslims, nor any more "otherized" faith. Home-grown, domestic terrorists who have a propensity for beating women. Which is one more reason why today's news about the Trump DHS is so troubling. politico.com/news/2020/08/2…
18/ Well what about self-defense? First of all, this isn't the wild west, and you aren't Josey Wales. The premise is so laughably stupid that I'm just going to leave it to comedians to rebut that one.
19/ BTW - the Australian buyback program after the Port Arthur shooting that Jeffries mentions? It's a real thing. And it really worked! vox.com/2015/8/27/9212…
20/ By this point, some troll in my feed has likely said "well, what about Chicago?". Let's talk about that. Chicago, unlike NYC or LA is driving distance to Indiana and Wisconsin. And most homicides in Chicago are done with out of state guns.
21/ That's why I introduced the Gun Trafficker Detection Act which would require that anyone who legally owns a gun who fails to keep track of it and fails to report it missing shall be liable for crimes done with that gun. casten.house.gov/media/press-re…
22/ Now here's the thing. None of this should be controversial. Overwhelming majorities of Americans support assault weapons bans. politico.com/story/2019/08/…
23/ Ditto for background checks: iop.harvard.edu/get-involved/h…
24/ Passing those really simple laws would still leave us living in a country where we have too many damned guns. But at least it would make sure that we stop selling the deadliest ones, and that we try to keep them out of the hands of the wrong people.
24/ And the House did pass universal background checks this Congress. congress.gov/bill/116th-con…
25/ On a largely party-line basis it should be noted. If you wonder why, please refer back to tweet #2 in this series. But the @GOP-led Senate hasn't even bothered to bring it up for a vote. If you wonder why... you know what to do.
26/ So what's the NRA's play here? If most Americans want stricter gun controls, and 100% of Americans don't want to get shot, why would the NRA be so callous as to not care?
27/ Well let's not forget this little gem after the 2016 election when we learned that lots of Russian money was going through the NRA. Russia, after all, does have a strategic interest in a dysfunctional American democracy. finance.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/…
28/ And given that strategic intent, you can imagine why they might look the other way if the NRA's kleptocrat President was alleged to be abusing his power as a small price to pay for effectively buying the @GOP. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/w…
29/ So now to why I'm doing this today. Because last week, I made a (pretty funny, I must admit) joke about the toxic-masculinity that has infected this whole debate. Which apparently drove the right wing nutjobs up the wall.
30/ So they did what they do. They got their fear-and-noise machine fired up, telling people how horrible I am. And for the last 48 hours, my office phones have been ringing off the hook.
31/ The callers (invariably men) are using every four letter word to yell at our (largely female) staff and interns. Because they have been trained to believe that their fragile masculinity needs to be defended, and that is an appropriate response.
32/ And they are increasingly being egged on by the @GOP and their mouthpieces, who lack the moral compass to see the risk of letting that genie out of the bottle, but fear anyone calling out the rot that lies at the core of the NRA.
33/ But here's the thing. I don't want to see another mass shooting. I don't want to see another punk white gang member who put "militia" in the name of his club to get lionized for shooting people in Kenosha.
34/ I'm sick of every politician who says not to politicize a problem that is innately political. I'm sick of taking my daughters to Stop the Bleed trainings so they can learn what to do if there is a shooting in their school and they are the first one on the scene.
35/ I'm sick of going to vigils for mass shooting victims. I'm sick of moments of silence on the House floor for shooting victims. I'm sick of trying to figure out how to make the same damned speech sound fresh and personal to the victims of yet another copy-cat crime.
36/ But none of that ends if we don't stand up to bullies. So here we are. The NY AG may have begun the end of the NRA. But even if they have, the NRA-infected rot within the @GOP is still with us.
37/ There is no one in the @GOP who has shown the leadership to confront that rot. Which means we have to win overwhelmingly at the polls in November. And we can because the overwhelming majority of Americans are on the right side of this issue. Now VOTE. /fin
