{"id":187400,"date":"2013-03-13T19:33:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T00:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/13\/pernicious-contemptible-ratfs\/"},"modified":"2013-03-13T19:33:00","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T00:33:00","slug":"pernicious-contemptible-ratfs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/03\/13\/pernicious-contemptible-ratfs\/","title":{"rendered":"Pernicious Contemptible Ratf%$#s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Republican Senators, who just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/14\/us\/politics\/gop-senators-add-gun-protections-to-financing-bill.html?google_editors_picks=true\">included the NRA&#8217;s wet dreams in the continuing resolution to keep the government running<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">With gun safety measures headed to the Senate floor, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees have quietly made permanent four formerly temporary gun-rights provisions largely favored by Republicans. Those provisions are part of a spending bill that would keep the government running through Sept. 30.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The provisions, which have been renewed separately at various points, would prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories to ensure that they have not lost guns or had them stolen, and would retain a broad definition of \u201cantique\u201d guns that can be imported into the United States outside of normal regulations.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Another amendment would prevent the A.T.F. from refusing to renew a dealer\u2019s license for lack of business; many licensed dealers who are not actively engaged in selling firearms can now obtain a license to sell guns and often fly under the radar of the agency and other law enforcement officials, which gun control advocates argue leads to a freer flow of illegal guns.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">A final measure would require the bureau to attach a disclaimer to data about guns to indicate that it \u201ccannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crimes.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Officials from the A.T.F. have long complained that quirky laws passed by Congress hamstring their ability to curb gun crimes. For example, under federal laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions, making it hard to track illegal guns. <\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Many of the provisions have been regularly added to appropriations bills since 2004. But Senate Democrats on the committee \u2014 pushed by Republicans and some Democrats who have made gun rights a signature issue \u2014 reluctantly agreed to make them permanent to stave off what they saw as an even more far-reaching House version of the bill.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The House offering contained a new rider that would prevent the A.T.F. from requiring gun dealers on the Southwest border to notify the agency when selling two or more long guns \u2014 semiautomatic rifles, higher than .22 caliber with detachable magazines \u2014 to the same buyer within five days. These firearms are the preferred weapons of Mexican drug cartels, Senate aides said.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The NRA is a toxic institution.  It poisons our society.<\/p>\n<p>We need to make it as toxic in politics as it is in society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Republican Senators, who just included the NRA&#8217;s wet dreams in the continuing resolution to keep the government running: With gun safety measures headed to the Senate floor, members of the House and Senate appropriations committees have quietly made permanent four formerly temporary gun-rights provisions largely favored by Republicans. Those provisions are part of a spending &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,998,969,1055],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-congress","category-evil","category-gun-laws"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}