![Joe Scarborough claims GOP faces extinction over gun control vote]()
Joe Scarborough went “ballistic” against Republicans for voting down the Manchin-Toomey expanded background checks amendment in the US Senate yesterday and as a result he claims the party is on the verge of extinction.
The GOP has problems, to be sure, but it’s position on gun control is probably not one of them.
The self-important Scarborough and his Morning Joe panelists also blasted those Democrats who voted against cloture on the bill, but in keeping with the MSNBC corporate culture, Joe spent most of the segment this morning slamming his fellow Republicans.
Joe said, in part: “Mark it down, this is going to be a turning point in the history of the Republican Party as well … This party that killed this background check yesterday — this party is moving toward extinction. A new Republican Party is going to replace it. And this is going to be a vote that people will look back on and say, ‘That party, that extremism, that was unsustainable.’”
Scarborough claimed that 90 percent of the American people supported Manchin-Toomey. But he’s wrong on that too, or at least that is quite an extravagant claim (unless the 90 percent applies to MSNBC employees, in which case it is surprising that it isn’t 100 percent).
While most Americans likely support expanding existing background checking procedures generally or in the abstract, many have misgivings about how it would be implemented in practice. Moreover, “90 percent” of the American people are for better or worse probably more concerned with Dancing With the Stars or Justin Bieber than any political machinations in Washington.
According to new Gallup Poll, only four percent (not 90) of Americans consider guns/gun control as an important problem in America. An AP poll found that only 49 percent favored stricter gun controls and that 52 percent disfavor President Barack Obama’s approach to additional lawmaking.
Joe’s contention that criminals, gang members, and terrorists would be deterred in any way by expanded background checks is optimistic in the extreme (if the word “extreme” can be used in this context). Joe clearly hasn’t been watching any crime or caper movies produced in Hollywood or in Europe and Asia where the bad guys and the good guys/anti-heros often encounter very little difficulty obtaining black-market weaponry.
Much more seriously, it is also universally acknowledged that Manchin-Toomey or any of the Obama administration proposals would not have prevented the horrible crimes that occurred in Aurora, Colorado, or at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
That being said, what Scarborough, his fellow MSNBC panelists, Obama/Biden and others who seek to politicize public safety apparently don’t seem to process is this: Someone can still be a non-gun owner or never even have touched or held a gun (and want nothing to do with a gun perhaps) to nonetheless favor the Second Amendment.
Moreover, you can just be an ordinary gun-owning or non-gun-owning citizen – rather than a conspiracy theorist wearing a camouflage vest who allegedly get his or her marching orders from the NRA — and support the Bill of Rights and preserving individual freedom against excessive government encroachment.
Similarly, you can be pro-choice on abortion and still feel that the Roe v. Wade decision was wrongly decided by the Supreme Court.
Moreover, while Manchin-Toomey theoretically ruled out any national gun registry (which opponents feared could eventually lead to gun confiscation), that’s not entirely the whole story. Government, to put it charitably, often changes its mind or makes mistakes. Accepting government promises at face value, that speaks for itself. Taking it one step further, this president has a tendency to issue executive orders that circumvent Congress, and his successors in office might be tempted to do the same.
University of Denver Law Professor David Kopel argues among other things that in Manchin-Toomey “The provision which claims to outlaw national gun registration in fact authorizes a national gun registry … The limit on creating a registry applies only to the Attorney General (and thus to entities under his direct control, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives). By a straightforward application of inclusio unius exclusio alterius it is permissible for entities other than the Attorney General to create gun registries, using whatever information they can acquire from their own operations. ”
Kopel also claims that the ATF can compile a national gun registry from the records of gun stores that have gone out of business. He adds that it would be highly unrealistic to expect that the Justice Department would sue itself for violating Manchin-Toomey. The latin term means “the inclusion of one is the exclusion of another.”
Watch Joe Scarborough’s gun control rant on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
‘Morning Joe’ Scarborough Claims GOP Faces Extinction Over Gun Control Vote is a post from: The Inquisitr
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