Paul Helmke - South Side of Northbound Horse

[twoeggsup]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-h..._b_405111.html

NRA Bosses – But Not Members – Defend Policies That Help Arm Suspected Terrorists
If the National Rifle Association’s leaders want to help suspected terrorists get easy access to guns, bucking the wishes of their own membership, they should come out and say so.

Instead – even in the wake of the Fort Hood shooting massacre – NRA bosses cloak their opposition to legislation that would close the Terror Gap in our nation’s gun laws with misdirected readings of the Constitution, as if our founding fathers said anything about the “rights” of suspected terrorists to arm themselves before slaughtering innocent Americans.

To the contrary, as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote 60 years ago, the Constitution is not a “suicide pact”:

No liberty is made more secure by holding that its abuses are inseparable from its enjoyment… The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger that, if the Court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill of Rights into a suicide pact….

Justice Jackson wrote this in a First Amendment case. Yet while many may disagree over how to apply his principle to questions of free speech, the issue should be clear when it comes to access to firearms.

Speech is used to express ideas. Firearms are used to kill over 30,000 Americans every year and wound another 80,000.

What the NRA’s leaders ignore is that America has always been about striking a balance between order and liberty, rather than always favoring one over the other. By sacrificing public safety at the altar of an “any gun, anywhere, any time” dogma, NRA bosses attempt to wreck this balance.

There is no room for this sort of mindset in America, especially after 9/11, and most recently, the Fort Hood shooting.

Making it easy for suspected terrorists to buy the weapons they would use to attack us on our own soil – just to adhere to some fundamentalist reading of the Second Amendment that even the founders, as well as the current Supreme Court, would not recognize – is dangerous and suicidal.

According to a recent survey by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, most NRA members agree. Luntz found recently that 82% of NRA members favor prohibiting people on the “Terrorist Watch List” from buying guns. The NRA’s bosses, however, are either unaware of their members’ views on this issue or they don’t care.

When it comes to protecting our communities from terrorism, Americans do not read the Constitution as a theoretical exercise. We live it and breathe it every day. So while the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun in the home for self defense, we also know that it isn’t a “suicide pact” that requires us to allow suspected terrorists to easily acquire all the weapons they desire.

Most Americans – including NRA members and gun owners – reject the NRA leadership’s false choice between order and liberty.

We choose both.

Due process? We don't need no stinkin' due process!!!

[stephpd]

Where does one start with such BS. First I don't trust anything that comes out of the mouth of a business that's sole purpose is the total elimination of the 2A.

He gives some misguided lecture on how some Judge ruled on a 1A case as obscure yet clear when applied elsewhere?

The use of sad stories involving firearms as an excuse to erode a right is wrong, no matter how many times it's tried. And the terror watch list isn't infallible, there are many on it that shouldn't be, while others that should be are missed.The example of Fort Hood is used here yet the Officer in the Army would never have been on that list and allowed to stay in the military (I'd guess).

Now if we could just use some common sense laws when using the 1A and stop the treasonous talk of these anti gun hate groups.

[wa3ra]

Quelle merde!

I've commented as TimeToHitReset.

[twoeggsup]

Quelle merde!

I've commented as TimeToHitReset.

They apparently rejected my comment

[XD40coyote]

I had seen some at another forum once call him Paul Helmroid. Now every time I hear of Helmke I think of itchy outchy assholes and the smell of blood and poop. Well the guy IS an asshole, so...

[customloaded]

I don't know where the Author got his figures but did he miss last weeks internation head line news from the FBI that murder rates are lowest in 40 years...like, less than 15,000 killed? 80,000 wounded? At that number, every US Citizen should know at least one person who has been wounded by gun fire.

Totally anti slanted piece...opps, sorry, I got the runs today and I got to hit the privy...just need a piece of paper with shit writen on it for wiping purposes...oh look, I'm in luck...

[nijwnfi]

When did the gun show loophole become the terror gap?

[stephpd]

Hard to believe that a 'progressive/liberal' rag like The Huffington Post can only garner one person to comment in their favor. 36 comments so far and just one that even attempts to back up the BS in this fairy tale. Of course it's all off base and irrelevant but I'd thought they'd have a better track record for spreading disinformation.

All you right wing radicals need to stop reading and commenting!!!!!!!!
Using facts just gets in the way of emotional diatribes.

[Warpt762x39]

How about, if someone is suspected of being a terrorist and they have any proof at all, they arrest the suspected terrorist instead of just putting their name on a list.

By George, that would solve that pesky "arming the terrorist" problem they got going there.

Idiots will continue to believe bullshit like that as long as there are those either stupid, or evil, enough to spew it. Like Ron White says, you can't fix stupid.

[twoeggsup]

When did the gun show loophole become the terror gap?

One of the other questions on the 'NRA' poll conducted for MAIG was about the "Gun Show Loophole".

Which of course poll answers change depending on how they are asked.

If someone is asked "Should someone on the 'Terror List' be allowed to buy a deadly assault weapon?" They will have a different answer than if they are asked "Should the government be allowed to keep a secret list of who and who is not allowed to own guns?"
and...

If someone is asked "Should criminals be allowed to buy assault weapons at gunshows without a background check?" They will have a differnt answer than if they were asked "Should the government forbid all private transfer of guns even between spouses and between parents and adult offspring?"

Considering the poll was commissioned by MAIG I can just imagine how the questions were asked.

Helmke, would like the answers to mean that NRA members don't care about due process or the 1st and 2nd Ammendmant any more than he does.