Justin's Political Corner

I’m a member of the National Rifle Association and a former Army officer with assignments in the military police, artillery, and operations research and intelligence at the Pentagon.

I’m also Ted Nugent’s older brother.

Ted and I recently attended the NRA convention in Houston, where he delivered the gathering’s final speech and continued his ardent defense of the Second Amendment. Ted and I have hunted together for decades, and we legally own a large number of guns. We both understand that guns constitute deadly force, so safety is foremost in our minds. It’s part of responsible gun ownership.

And I agree with Ted that our constitutional right to bear arms should not be undermined. I want all those who are qualified to purchase a gun to be able to do so. But — and here is where I part ways with my brother — not everyone is qualified to own a gun, so expanded background checks should be a legislative priority.

I believe strongly that expanding and improving mandatory background checks will keep a lot of people who aren’t entitled to Second Amendment rights from having easy access to guns. As of today, a convicted felon can find a gun show or a private seller and buy a firearm without a background check. That loophole should be closed. Every gun transaction must include a thorough background check. Why would responsible gun owners want to protect people who threaten not only our safety but our gun rights?

The NRA has it wrong: Irresponsible gun owners are bad for everyone. If you shouldn’t have access to a gun, then there should be no way for you to access a gun! Can anyone argue with that?

Consider the mentally ill, one of the biggest threats to firearm safety. How do we preserve their rights to health privacy while keeping firearms out of their hands? It’s a huge concern, given the role mental illness has played in recent gun-violence tragedies. While some states have made progress, it’s far from universal.

But convicted felons, people with restraining orders against them and those with a history of mental illness can still find ways to purchase weapons. No one should stand for this.

The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, and the gun violence that claims on average eight children per day in the United States, require us to think differently about what the Second Amendment really means.

Enhanced background checks need not threaten the Second Amendment. Why are the NRA and the elected representatives who support it so slow to realize this? Or do they fear a slippery slope toward greater restrictions on gun rights? If they don’t want to burden a flawed system, they should be part of fixing it.

Reducing gun violence and protecting the Second Amendment is not an either-or idea. I challenge the NRA’s leadership to partner with groups such as Evolve, which I recently joined, that seek to protect gun rights while creating a culture of responsibility, safe gun use and prudent access to firearms.

Can we imagine an NRA capable of taking that on? Or are we doomed to the uncompromising philosophy driving everything the organization does? I want to be proud of being a member of a proactive NRA.

I attended this month’s NRA convention to better understand what the organization is thinking and advocating. Speakers such as Glenn Beck and my brother are extremely articulate and connect with that audience, while Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s executive vice president, excels at creating a strident stand-and-fight mentality that does not speak for the majority of gun owners. Ted and I have talked about these matters over the years, but more often lately. I concede that he is right on some points: In some instances, cities and states with less-strict gun laws have less violent crime. But that does not argue for arming America. Ted is someone who speaks in extremes to make his points. It reflects who he is, and it works for him and his audience.

h/t: Washington Post

Pete Santilli is the kind of person we normally wouldn’t cover here – an unhinged Internet ranter who exists somewhere to the crazier side of Alex Jones. Santilli’s broadcast – on which he details conspiracy theories on everything from 9/11 to Sandy Hook — doesn’t even have Jones’ audience: he describes himself as “a radio talkshow host ready to take my show to national syndication; that is, of course, if the FCC regulated AM/FM radio stations can handle my truth & honesty.”

But in the past couple of months, Santilli has attracted two major gun activists to his show: National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent, who used the opportunity to call President Obama a Nazi, and Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt, who worked with Santilli to flesh out his theory that President Obama is raising a private army to overpower the U.S. military. Pratt, in particular, is taken remarkably seriously among the GOP – he has been partially credited with taking down a background checks measure in the Senate last month.

So, we started paying attention to Santilli, and we learned pretty quickly what Nugent and Pratt felt perfectly comfortable associating themselves with. On his show last week, Santilli went on a disgusting, violent rant in which he called for the entire Bush family and President Obama to be “tried, convicted and shot” for “treason” (and in George H.W. Bush’s case “involvement with his cronies in the John F. Kennedy assassination”) and for Hillary Clinton to be “tried, convicted and shot in the vagina.”

He then went on to describe in graphic detail how he personally wanted to “pull the trigger” on Clinton – who he repeatedly referred to with a sexual slur – and watch her slowly die in revenge for what he believes was the faking of SEAL Team Six’s Bin Laden raid. 

ow about Hillary Clinton? That frickin’ assbag has not only been involved in drug trafficking out of Mena, Arkansas, okay? Not only that; and all these people try to have this plausible deniability thing, yeah sure, they’re removed, they’re just a bunch of politicians. Well, guess where they got all of the money to acquire the power that they have?

This ‘C U Next Tuesday,’ Hillary Clinton, has been involved in the killings of American troops.  Namely, the mysterious suicide of the emotionally unstable Navy SEAL commander who just so happened to be involved in all of her dealings in the Middle East, okay.  And he just mysteriously got suicided along with everyone else associated with the Clinton family. Miss Hillary Clinton needs to be convicted, she needs to be tried, convicted and shot in the vagina. I wanna pull the trigger. That ‘C U Next Tuesday’ has killed human beings that are in our ranks of our service. 

I want to remind you that in Benghazi, Miss Hillary ‘the fricken’ biggest vagina on the face of the planet’ told troops to stand down and to not go in and interfere with the operation that they set up because they’re moving arms; Barack Obama is moving drugs through the CIA out of Afghanistan and Barack Obama needs to be tried, convicted, and shot for crimes against the United States of America. And if anybody has a problem with that, then you are an enemy of our state.

..

I want to shoot [Clinton] right in the vagina and I don’t want her to die right away; I want her to feel the pain and I want to look her in the eyes and I want to say ‘on behalf of all Americans that you’ve killed, on behalf of the Navy SEALS,’ … the families of Navy SEAL Team Six who were involved in the fake hunt down of this Obama bin Laden thing, that whole fake scenario - because these Navy SEALS know the truth, they killed them all - on behalf of all of those people, I’m supporting our troops by saying we need to try, convict, and shoot Hillary Clinton in the vagina.

The full clip:

h/t: Right Wing Watch

The Missouri Legislature on Wednesday sent Gov. Jay Nixon (D) a bill which would declare federal gun regulations unenforceable, according to the Associated Press.

The Missouri House voted 118-36 in favor of the measure on Wednesday. The state’s Senate passed the bill last month.

He’ll (Nixon) veto it, only to see the veto possibly get overridden.

h/t: TPM Livewire

HOUSTON (AP) — The incoming leader of the National Rifle Association has a long history with the powerful gun rights lobby and a penchant for bold statements that are sure to enflame an already explosive national debate over gun control.

James Porter, an Alabama attorney and first vice president of the NRA, assumes the presidency on Monday after the group’s national convention wraps up in Houston. He didn’t wait until then to ignite a new furor over gun control, telling the NRA grass-roots organizers on Friday they are the front line of a “culture war” that goes beyond gun rights.

“(You) here in this room are the fighters for freedom. We are the protectors,” Porter said.

Porter, 64, whose father was NRA president from 1959-1961, is part of the small, Birmingham, Ala., law firm of Porter, Porter & Hassinger. The firm’s website notes its expertise in defending gun manufacturers in lawsuits.

Porter takes over the organization as the NRA finds itself in a national fight over gun control in Washington, D.C., and state capitols around the country. The NRA had a major victory regarding gun control with the defeat in the U.S. Senate of a bill that would have expanded background checks for gun sales. But it lost ground in some places as several states passed laws expanding background checks and banning large ammunition magazines after December’s mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

Porter has called President Barack Obama a “fake president,” Attorney General Eric Holder “rabidly un-American” and the U.S. Civil War the “War of Northern Aggression.” On Friday, he repeated his call for training every U.S. citizen in the use of standard military firearms, to allow them to defend themselves against tyranny.

Gun control advocates say Porter makes outgoing NRA President David Keene look like a moderate on gun issues, even though Keene had said the NRA would try to punish lawmakers who voted in favor of expanded background checks and other gun control measures.

Keene had worked to offer a softer, if equally staunch voice for the gun lobby’s ideas when compared with Wayne LaPierre, the fiery executive vice president who remains the NRA’s most prominent voice on the public stage.

Porter as president, “pulls (the NRA) more into the extremist camp,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “With Jim Porter, they’ve gone full crazy.”

New President, same extremist agenda at the NRA.

H/T: TPM