Mayors Against Illegal Guns today announced a new television ad holding Senator Jeff Flake accountable for not keeping his word to Arizonans Caren and Tom Teves, whose son Alex was killed in the Aurora theatre shooting while shielding his fiancée. The Teves, who voted for Senator Flake in 2012, sent a letter to their Senator asking him to vote for background check legislation and he responded that, "strengthening background checks is something we agree on." Just one month later, Senator Flake voted against bipartisan legislation proposed by NRA A-rated Senators Pat Toomey and Joe Manchin -- and supported by Senator John McCain -- that would have closed loopholes that make it easy for dangerous people to get guns.
Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) declares his support for an assault weapons ban on the floor of the Senate on Wednesday.
As support for a background-check deal collapses in the Senate, Harry Reid broke with the National Rifle Association and declared his support for an assault-weapons ban. “We must strike a better balance between the right to defend ourselves and the right of every child in America to grow up safe from gun violence,” the A-rated Nevada Democrat said on the Senate floor. Unfortunately for him, the outlook for gun-control legislation looks bleak. A bipartisan amendment on background checks that is a vital ingredient in a passable gun bill appears to lack the necessary votes. Sen. Joe Manchin, one of the bill’s cosponsors, said on the floor that he knows they’re close but doesn’t know what the outcome will be.
Reid added “I’ll vote for the ban because maintaining the law and order is more important than satisfying conspiracy theorists who believe in black helicopters and false flags,” he said. “I’ll vote for the ban because saving the lives of police officers, young and old, and innocent civilians, young and old, is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.”
The Senate will vote Wednesday afternoon on gun measures that may determine the shape of legislation inspired by the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a new television ad Thursday that features family members of four victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting last December, and calls on leaders to remember their loved ones and prevent others from experiencing the toll of gun violence by taking real action to pass commonsense gun law reforms.
The ad features the families of two first-grade students, and two teachers killed in the shooting at Sandy Hook, out of the total 20 children and six adult staffers killed that day. The family members in the ad are Neil Heslin, father of first-grader Jesse Lewis; Chris and Lynn McDonnell, parents of first-grader Grace McDonnell; Jillian Soto, sister of teacher Vicky Soto; and Terri and Gilles Rousseau, parents of teacher Lauren Rousseau.
"I want to prevent any other family from having to go through what we're going through," Chris McDonnell says in the ad.
"Don't let the memory of Newtown fade without doing something real," adds Terri Rousseau.
The ad says that "Connecticut can save lives" and calls for comprehensive background checks, a limit on high-capacity magazines and an assault weapons ban.
The heart wrenching ad is the first to include family members of the Sandy Hook victims in a call for universal background checks for gun sales, which will be a component of the gun control legislation being introduced in the Senate. The ads will air on cable and broadcast television in the Hartford, Connecticut area. and specifically target the state's legislature to enact better gun violence prevention.
Nevada City, California will provide a handful of permits to homeless persons if they submit themselves to a police background check. Even if they have done nothing illegal, the small number of permits give the police the power to send anyone else having the audacity to want to shut their eyes and rest their weary head while living in abject poverty moving on down the road to the next town.
How is it that when your world falls down around you, your basic rights vanish and the police treat you like some vermin that must be eradicated?
Nevada City, California has passed a new law which requires homeless people to have a permit to sleep in public.
Chief James Wickham told CBS Sacramento: “The goal is to start managing the homeless population within our city. Those are the ones we really don’t want in our city and that we’re trying to keep from camping in our city.”
A no-camping ordinance was also passed by the city, which would criminalize the poor for sleeping in a car, tent or in the woods.
However, if the police give a permit to a homeless person, then that poor person would not be arrested for sleeping.
There are no similar permits required for non-homeless people who might take a nap in a park.
Wickham says he has identified about 60 homeless persons in Nevada City, and will hand out approximately 6 to 10 sleeping permits. If it "works out" he will consider more permits in about 6 months.
The Chief claims that the majority of the area's homeless are "troublemakers," and "criminals," and he hopes his goal of managing the city's homeless population will rid them of these undesirables.
I've got more than a handful of people now that I would like to see be visited by three spirits in the night, and not a moment too soon.
