1/10: Pass Universal Background Checks:
33 states don't require background checks for all gun sales. Close the Gun Show Loophole & expand background checks to include magazines and ammunition.
2/10: Close the Charleston Loophole:
Each year hundreds of thousands of potentially prohibited people buy guns from licensed dealers without a completed background check. Extend the time to complete one.
3/10: Pass a national “Red Flag” law:
Allow family members, schools, and law enforcement to intervene by petitioning a court for an order to temporarily prevent someone in crisis from accessing guns.
4/10: Pass Domestic Terrorism Legislation:
The US is seeing increasing levels of hate crimes. As we saw with ISIS & Al Qaeda extremists, radicalization doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Right-wing media must also be accountable
5/10: Pass Mandatory Waiting Periods:
The Atlanta shooter got his gun an hour before his rampage. The Uvalde shooter purchased 375 rounds of ammunition and an AR-15 just days before the Uvalde massacre.
6/10: Ban High-Capacity Magazines:
155% more people are shot when an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine was used. Although 70% of Americans such a ban, only nine states have enacted laws to do so.
7/10: Increase Legal Age for Guns & Ammunition to 21.
Over 2/3 of school shootings were committed by shooters under 18 while the median age was 16. Kids this age lack impulse control. 82% of Americans support this change
8/10: Enforce Parental Accountability.
Only 23 states have Child Access Prevention laws to hold parents accountable when kids access guns. Many of those laws are watered down and prosecutions rare.
9/10: Require Manual Trigger Safeties:
Gun makers aren't required to manufacture guns with manual safeties that could prevent the all-too-common act of a child pulling a trigger and “accidentally” killing mommy.
10/10: End Gun Maker Immunity:
The threat of civil liability and punitive damages promote consumer safety. However, gun makers enjoy broad immunity from the justice system and are rarely held accountable.
2 - On Ronald Reagan’s birthday, it’s fun to remember how he took my dead father’s social security survivor benefits away from my struggling single mom, taxed social security to pay for massive tax cuts on the rich, & how Republicans are pushing for more!
3 - On Ronald Reagan’s birthday, it’s fun to remember how he reclassified KETCHUP as a vegetable to cut funding for school lunches while he transferred billions to the top, exploded deficits, and widened income inequality with his trickle down idiocy.
Republicans have spent decades trying to abolish gov’t agencies including EPA, FDA, & FBI, pass massive tax cuts for the wealthy & big oil, eliminate minimum wage, slash Medicare, & dismantle Social Security.
Marco Rubio getting honest on the Republican play book: Cut taxes on the rich, use their resulting deficits as ammo against Democrats and an excuse to gut programs like Social Security and Medicare.
1) As Russian forces close in on the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, and face brave resistance, I wanted to share a short story of my mother, a Freedom Fighter from another brutal Russian invasion: Hungary, 1956.
She taught me freedom is not free. History repeats.
2) The Soviet Union occupied half of Europe after WWII & built a very real iron curtain right down the middle. Ignoring agreements, Stalin redrew the map and installed puppet governments. He even took a piece of Hungary & annexed it to Ukraine, dividing families for decades
3) Khrushchev’s "secret speech" in February 1956, denounced the crimes of Stalin and his cult of personality. This "de-Stalinization" led reformers across the Eastern bloc to openly express their discontent with Soviet occupation and oppression.
2) In 1987 Soviet diplomats & KGB arranged a Moscow visit. On his return, Trump spent $100,000 on full-page ads criticizing US foreign policy on “why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves."
3) Trump’s love affair with authoritarianism & dictators is nothing new. Trump saw breakup of Soviet Union as weakness, praised communist China for massacre at Tiananmen, & praised China’s Xi for becoming “President for life.”
Conservatives whitewash Civil War history, saying it was about “states’ rights” & not slavery. Here’s a thread to help you make up your own mind and to share. Not my words - the words of the Confederate authors.
2) “Our new government’s foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - subordination to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition.”
Alexander Stephens has no place in the US Capitol.
3) Why did Georgia secede?
The prohibition of slavery… hostility to it, the equality of the black & white races… were boldly proclaimed by its leaders & applauded by its followers… The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle.”