This past week, I spoke to former Governor Howard Dean on a wide range of topics. My chief interest was to get his impressions about current gun control measures being considered in Congress. During his run for governor in Vermont, Gov. Dean received high ratings from the NRA. Yet, recently, he has been highly critical of that group, saying that they are “populated by crazy people”.

It’s also the tenth anniversary of the Iraq War and, at a time when there was nearly unanimous support for that war, Gov. Dean was one of the most outspoken opponents. Finally, Gov. has come out in favor of the sequester so I wanted to ask him more about that.

Enjoy (after the jump.)

The Second Amendment wasn’t intended to include gun fetishists

One of the most disingenuous claims by the gun fetishists lobby is that assault weapons are protected by the Second Amendment. This, of course, is not true. The Second Amendment was never intended to allow for the unregulated promulgation of weaponry throughout our country and our communities. That is, in fact, the reason the phrase “well regulated militia” is part of it. What is, to me, the most galling are the laughable justifications they use to defend their bizarre obsession with owning and shooting weapons that so closely resemble those used by our military men and women.

But, we are a rational society and the time when a tiny minority of people who get a thrill out of owning and shooting military-style weapons get to make all of the decisions is coming to an end. They may call themselves “hobbyists”. They may say that their desire to pretend to be a soldier is protected by the constitution. But when the rest of us watch our fellow citizens, including small children, mowed down by weapons with high-capacity magazines, we know it’s time for the adults to start putting some limits down.

One of those limits is to replace the Assault Weapons Ban that expired 2004 with a new, strengthened version. Senator Diane Feinstein has introduced such legislation. Please sign the Democracy for America petition, urging members of Congress to pass it.

More after the jump.

Oops

The National Gun Fetishist Association (NRA) wants to put armed security guards in every school in the United States because, as everyone knows, the only effective solution to gun violence is many, many more guns in our schools.

Besides, c’mon. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, in a word, THIS.

Find out what “this” is after the jump.

Good for the goose but not for the gander

On December 22nd, The Journal News in an area just outside of New York City published an interactive map of those people in that area holding handgun permits. By clicking on the dots on the map, you could identify the name and address of the people with these permits. As the newspaper said in its piece, “Map: Where are the gun permits in your neighborhood?”, the data does not include owners of rifles or shotguns which can be purchased without a permit. It also “does not mean the individual at a specific location owns a weapon, just that they are licensed to do so.”

The gun fetishists went nuts.

“It’s an invasion of privacy!” they cried.

“It violates my rights!” they whined.

“It’s puts people in danger!” they warned.

Watching them fall all over themselves to put their 2nd Amendment rights above the 1st Amendment rights of the newspaper to share public information has been very illuminating.

Much more after the jump.

Hypocrisy is rarely so clearly on display

Last week at his press conference (where, by the way, he didn’t take a single question), National Gun Fetishists Association (NRA) Executive Vice Chair Wayne LaPierre castigated the federal government for its inaction on forming a national registry for the mentally ill.

It’s an appalling demostration of hypocrisy given that what he didn’t mention is that his group has been actively fighting AGAINST a similar registry of gun registrations in this country.

Aye, aye, aye…

Gun fetishists are in complete freakout mode right now because they realize that the rest of the country is no longer buying their tripe about the evil unconstitutionality of controlling guns and ammunition in this country. They are so mindless about this that they have latched onto one of the weirdest reasons imaginable for not passing any gun laws.

I’m going to try to explain this but, I’ll be frank, their “logic” is anything but logical. If you don’t follow it, that’s completely understandable.

Doubling down on stupid just makes you twice as stupid

National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre went on Meet the Press this morning to make sure the entire country knows just how off base and out of touch he and the gunphiles he speaks for are with their plan to put a gun-toting protector in every school in the USA. The National Center for Education Statistics says that, in the 2009-2010 school year, there were 132,183 public and private K-12 schools in this country. Leave it to the NRA to come up with a solution to school shootings that involves putting over 132,000 new guns into our schools.

More after the jump.

Up is down. War is peace.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre just went on national television to tell the country that “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” In other words, the only solution to gun violence is gun fights.

More about the discussion of gun fetishism as a mental illness after the jump.

This isn’t about the right to bear arms, it’s about the right to be a freak

Have a look at this Bushmaster ad for their semi-automatic rifles:

In any sort of rational debate about gun control, we would be facing the fact that the most extreme elements of the “stop any restrictions on gun ownership ever at all the end” crowd are, at the end of the day, gun fetishists.

Period.

Much more after the jump.

The time for this conversation is NOW

Early yesterday morning, just hours before the horrific mass shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the Republican-led Michigan legislature passed S.B. 59, a bill that would allow concealed weapons in public schools, churches, and day care centers. Aware of the backlash that was likely to occur after the Connecticut shooting less than 10 hours later, Michigan Republicans released an astonishing statement on their Facebook page.

That statement and a discussion of the issue of gun control laws after the jump.

It IS impressive…

If you thought the speed with which Michigan Republicans went to chit chatting about making Michigan a Right to Work for Less state and actually accomplishing that was impressive, you should keep watching because they aren’t done yet, not by a long shot. The frantic pace continued yesterday, just one day after they kicked unions to the curb and brought a record number of people to the Capitol to protest.

Read about the four major pieces of legislation that passed in the House after the jump.