Remarks by the President After Meeting on Sexual Assault in the Military

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

Cabinet Room

4:53 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT:  I appreciate all of you coming in just for a second.  We have gathered here all the top people in not just our military but our entire national security operation.  And I want to start off by thanking all the people sitting around this table and in this room for the extraordinary service that they’ve rendered this country. 

And I want to also remind everybody that we have folks active in theater right now -- men and women in uniform -- who are making heroic sacrifices on behalf of our security.  And our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families because they are dealing with a whole lot to make sure that we are safe.

We have focused this conversation, though, on something that is at the core of our effectiveness as a military.  I told all these people that one of the great honors of my life is serving as Commander-in-Chief to what I consider to be the best military in the history of the world.  And I am in awe of the work that the vast majority of our men and women in uniform do. 

But the reason we are so good is not because of the fancy equipment.  It’s not because of our incredible weapon systems and technology.  It’s because of our people.  And the capacity for our men and women in uniform to work as a team, a disciplined unit looking out for each other in the most severe of circumstances, is premised, as Ray Odierno said, on trust.  It comes down to do people trust each other and do they understand that they’re all part of a single system that has to operate under whatever circumstances effectively.

The issue of sexual assault in our armed forces undermines that trust.  So not only is it a crime, not only is it shameful and disgraceful, but it also is going to make and has made the military less effective than it can be.  And as such, it is dangerous to our national security.  So this is not a sideshow.  This is not sort of a second-order problem that we’re experiencing.  This goes to the heart and the core of who we are and how effective we’re going to be.

Now, the good news is I am absolutely confident that everybody in this room and our leadership, starting with Chuck Hagel and Marty Dempsey and the Joint Chiefs, as well as our top enlisted men and women, they care about this.  And they’re angry about it.  And I heard directly from all of them that they’re ashamed by some of what’s happened.

But it’s not fixed yet, and that’s clear.  So even though I think there’s a level of concern and interest that is appropriate, we haven’t actually been able to ensure that our men and women in uniform are not experiencing this, and if they do experience it, that there’s serious accountability.

So what I’ve done is I’ve asked Secretary of Defense Hagel and Marty Dempsey to help lead a process to continue to get at this.  That starts with accountability, and that means at every level.  And that includes accountability not just for enforcing the law, but also training our personnel effectively, putting our best people on this challenge.

I think Secretary of the Army McHugh made a very good point, which is I’m not sure we’ve incentivized some of our top people to understand this is as core to our mission as anything else.  And we’ve got to reward them, not think of this as a sideline for anything else that they do, but incentivize ambitious folks in the ranks to make sure that they understand this is important.  So that’s part of accountability. 

Empowering victims.  We’ve got to create an environment in which victims feel that they’re comfortable coming forward and they know people have their backs, and that they will work through this process in a way that keeps the focus on justice and make right what’s been wrong as opposed to suddenly they’re on trial, it may weaken their position, it make compromise their ability to advance.  That’s going to be important.  They’ve got to know that they should have no fear of retaliation, no fear of stigma, no damage to their careers, and certainly no protection for criminals. 

Third thing is justice for the victims.  When victims do come forward, they deserve justice.  Perpetrators have to experience consequences.  And I’m pleased that Secretary Hagel has proposed reforms that would restrict the ability of commanders to overturn convictions after trial.  Those reforms have my full support. 

There are a range of ideas that are being proposed on Capitol Hill, and I know that Chuck and Marty are both engaged with those members of Congress.  But what I’ve said to them is I want to leave no stone unturned and I want us to explore every good idea that’s out there in order to fix this problem.  And I’m pleased to say that Secretary Hagel is not only consulting with Congress but is also looking at militaries around the world -- the Canadians or the Israelis or others -- that may have design systems that get at this to see if there are any lessons learned in terms of best practices. 

And Vice President Biden, who has been a champion for issues -- around issues of domestic violence for 20 years or more, he made an important point, which is that we’ve got to make sure that advocates and professionals who are in the civilian system and have been working on this problem for a long time, that we’re listening to them as well; that we don’t assume that the military has to completely recreate the wheel.  And I think that’s a very important point.

So I want to thank all the work that Congress is doing, especially our friends in the Senate.  All of us here are committed to working with them.

The last point I’m going to make, and that is that there is no silver bullet to solving this problem.  This is going to require a sustained effort over a long period of time.  And that’s why I’m very pleased to know that Secretary Hagel is going to be having weekly meetings on this.  And I want us to make sure that we’ve got effective metrics and feedback loops, so that we are continually evaluating how well we’re doing.

And one point that was made around the table is that a sign that we’re actually getting at this problem may initially be increased reporting rather than less reporting.  We may see more reporting of incidents, in part because even outside of our military, traditionally, these problems of sexual assault are vastly underreported.  And so over the next several months and years, if I start seeing data that shows that in fact we are seeing more reports, that may actually indicate to me that people are becoming more confident about moving forward.

On the other hand, I then want those trend lines to start going down because that indicates that we’re also starting to fix the problem and we’ve highlighted it, and people who are engaged in despicable behavior, they get fully punished for it.

So, again, I want to emphasize -- everybody in this room has heard from me directly.  They’ve heard from Secretary Hagel, and they’ve heard from Marty Dempsey.  They all understand this is a priority and we will not stop until we’ve seen this scourge, from what is the greatest military in the world, eliminated. 

Thank you very much, everybody.

END
5:03 P.M. EDT

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov.

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Gillibrand urges more leadership from Hagel in sex assault cases

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Friday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel needs to show more leadership in dealing with sexual assault cases in the military.

“I think the president has taken strong leadership on this issue and I am urging Secretary Hagel to do the same,” Gillibrand told MSNBC’s Andrew Mitchell. “Secretary Hagel has … said he wants to remove from the chain of command the ability to overturn a verdict. We would like to add to that the ability of the commander to actually decide whether or not to got to trial.”

This week, Gillibrand and a dozen other lawmakers from both sides of the aisle introduced legislation that would transfer authority in sexual assault cases from the military to the judicial system. 

The bill would bar military officials from overturning verdicts in such cases, and would transfer the decision to prosecute cases from the military to independent prosecutors.

“If those two things can be moved to the judicial system so a trained military prosecutor can make that decision about whether a case can go to trial, I think that’s going to begin to solve the problem,” she continued. “If you have 26,000 sexual assaults a year and only 3,000 reported, you have a large problem.”

While Gillibrand’s legislation has gained support in Congress, some military officials are resistant to the structural overhaul. Hagel this week said the “ultimate authority” about whether to prosecute should “remain within the chain of command.”

A Pentagon spokesman later walked that comment back, saying the Defense Secretary was open to all options.

“He’s left the door open, he’s said more options are on the table,” Gillibrand said. 

“So I’m hopeful that through advocacy and through working with our colleagues and with some bipartisan support in the House and Senate, we will begin to have a broader conversation about what types of structural changes will create the accountability and transparency and justice for victims that is sorely lacking right now.”

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Presidential Proclamation -- National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, 2013

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For Immediate Release March 29, 2013 Presidential Proclamation -- National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, 2013 NATIONAL SEXUAL ASSAULT AWARENESS AND PREVENTION MONTH, 2013- - - - - - -BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICAA PROCLAMATION In the last 20 years, our Nation has made meaningful progress toward addressing sexual assault. Where victims were once left without recourse, laws have opened a path to safety and justice; where a culture of fear once kept violence hidden, survivors are more empowered to speak out and get help. But even today, too many women, men, and children suffer alone or in silence, burdened by shame or unsure anyone will listen. This month, we recommit to changing that tragic reality by stopping sexual assault before it starts and ensuring victims get the support they need. Sexual violence is an affront to human dignity and a crime no matter where it occurs. While rape and sexual assault affect all communities, those at the greatest risk are children, teens, and young women. Nearly one in five women will be a victim of sexual assault during college. For some groups, the rates of violence are even higher -- Native American women are more than twice as likely to experience sexual assault as the general population. Moreover, we know rape and sexual assault are consistently underreported, and that the physical and emotional trauma they leave behind can last for years. With Vice President Joe Biden's leadership, we have made preventing sexual violence and supporting survivors a top priority. Earlier this month, I was proud to sign the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, which renews and strengthens the law that first made it possible for our country to address sexual assault in a comprehensive way. The Act preserves critical services like rape crisis centers, upholds protections for immigrant victims, gives State and tribal law enforcement better tools to investigate cases of rape, and breaks down barriers that keep lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender victims from getting help. It also expands funding for sexual assault nurse examiner programs and sexual assault response teams, helping States deliver justice for survivors and hold offenders accountable. Just as we keep fighting sexual assault in our neighborhoods, we must also recommit to ending it in our military -- because no one serving our country should be at risk of assault by a fellow service member. Where this crime does take place, it cannot be tolerated; victims must have access to support, and offenders must face the consequencesof their actions. Members of our Armed Forces and their families can learn more about the resources available to them at 1-877-995-5247 and www.SafeHelpline.org. All Americans can play a role in changing the culture that enables sexual violence. Each of us can take action by lifting up survivors we know and breaking the silence surrounding rape and sexual assault. To get involved, visit www.WhiteHouse.gov/1is2many. Together, our Nation is moving forward in the fight against sexual assault. This month, let us keep working to prevent violence in every corner of America, and let us rededicate ourselves to giving survivors the bright future they deserve. NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim April 2013 as National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month. I urge all Americans to support survivors of sexual assault and work together to prevent these crimes in their communities. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.  BARACK OBAMA

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Bloomberg on assault weapons ban: ‘We’re going to get the vote’

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) pledged that supporters of an assault-weapons ban would get a vote in Congress.

“We've been fighting since 2007 to get a vote. We are going to have a vote for sure on assault weapons and we're going to have a vote on background checks,” said the prominent gun-control advocate in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s "Meet the Press."

“If we were to get background checks only, it wouldn't be as good as if we got both, but look, we demanded a plan and then we demanded a vote. We've got the plan, we're going to get the vote,” he said.

Bloomberg’s comments come after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced earlier this week that the Senate would vote on a gun control bill after returning from Easter recess. Reid, though, decided not to include a measure for a federal assault weapons ban, a key provision backed by the White House and Bloomberg.

Reid said Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) proposal could have hampered passage of other gun control measures. Efforts to heighten restrictions on gun ownership face an uphill struggle, with strong opposition from GOP lawmakers and the nation’s gun lobby.

Bloomberg will also personally fund a $12 million national campaign to target swing state senators to back gun control. The ads are slated to run in 13 states over the Easter recess. But the Bloomberg ads will press for background check legislation, which gun reform advocates believe has the best chance of becoming law, making no mention of assault weapons.

Bloomberg defended his efforts on gun control Sunday, saying that he had a "responsibility" as a public official to push for safer gun laws.

"I think I have a responsibility, and I think you and all of your viewers have responsibilities, to try to make this country safer for our families and for each other," he said. "And if I can do that by spending some money and taking the NRA from being the only voice to being one of the voices, so the public can really understand the issues, then I think my money would be well spent, and I think I have an obligation to do that."

Bloomberg's move though attracted a sharp rebuke from National Rifle Association (NRA) Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. 

LaPierre who also appeared on NBC said Bloomberg would realize he "can't buy America."

"He can't spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public. They don't want him in their restaurants, they don't want him in their homes. They don't want him telling them what food to eat; they sure don't want him telling them what self-defense firearms to own," said LaPierre.

Bloomberg met on Thursday with Vice President Joe Biden to discuss gun control efforts, and at a joint press conference warned that voters would watch Congress closely and expect action on gun control after last December’s traffic mass shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut.

“I don't think there's ever been an issue where the public has spoken so clearly, where Congress hasn't eventually understood and done the right thing,” said Bloomberg on Sunday.

“If 90% of the public want something, and their representatives vote against that, common sense says, they are going to have a price to pay for that. The public is going to eventually wake up and say, ‘I want to put in office somebody that will do the things that I think are necessary for this country,’” he added.

Gun-control advocates believe that legislation to mandate checks on all firearm purchasers has the best chance of passing Congress this session, with an assault weapons ban facing a much tougher fight.

President Obama, though, has made calls for an assault weapons ban a key element of his proposals to stem gun violence. In his weekly address he again urged lawmakers to vote on a series of gun measures including bans on the sale of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity clips.

“These ideas shouldn’t be controversial — they’re common sense,” Obama said. “They’re supported by a majority of the American people. And I urge the Senate and the House to give each of them a vote.”  

This story was published at 7:35 a.m. and has been updated.

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Dem Gov. Hickenlooper concedes assault weapons ban ‘tough sell’

By Molly K. Hooper - 03/24/13 11:10 AM ET

Less than a week after signing one of the nation’s toughest gun laws, Colorado’s governor conceded Sunday that banning assault weapons will be a tough sell on Capitol Hill.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper noted that in Colorado – a state that has endured several high-profile mass killings in recent years – the legislature wasn’t able to ban assault weapons.

“It’s a tough sell,” Hickenlooper explained on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He said he had encountered 200 protestors defending Second Amendment rights on Saturday at an event in the western part of his state who “prayed” with the governor over Colorado’s new gun laws.

“They were really upset just over universal background checks and banning the high capacity magazines … I met with the leaders of the protest … really tried to hear them … we had a blunt, honest dialogue but in the end they asked could they pray for me,” Hickenlooper told host Candy Crowley.

“They deeply believe that their guns and the Second Amendment are critical parts of American life, he added. 

“I think the feeling right now around assault weapons, at least in Colorado, is that they are so hard to define what an assault weapon is – there’s a lot of questions whether the 10 year federal ban was in existence, made a difference,” Hickenlooper said.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that the gun violence bill that the Senate will consider soon, will not include an assault weapon ban, to the chagrin of the White House.

Vice President Biden led a commission to examine possible legislative actions to prevent mass killings shortly after the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. late last year.

Biden recommended a ban on the sale of assault weapons and some high-capacity magazine clips. President Obama has pressed for lawmakers to reinstitute that ban, and the White House said last week that they would not stop “pushing” for a vote. 

Reid has said that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) assault weapons measure could see a vote as an amendment to the gun bill. But Reid warned that the assault weapons ban, which is unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled House could have dragged down other gun-control measures.

For its part, Colorado focused on mental health related issues in their bill to address gun violence. Hickenlooper on Sunday said a step-by-step approach could help build support.

“We focused on mental health first, then universal background checks … which clearly make a significant difference, that’s where we put our initial focus,” Hickenlooper explained.

Hickenlooper was also personally affected by gun violence last week, when the head of Colorado’s prison system was gunned down on Tuesday.

Tom Clements’ suspected assailant, Evan Ebel, happens to be the troubled son of Hickenlooper’s good friend of 30 years.

Authorities suspect that Clements’ name was on a hit list issued by a brutal white supremacist group in the Colorado prison system – of which Ebel was a member.

Hickenlooper suggested that his name may be on the list as well.

Asked if his security had been increased in light of the hit list, Hickenlooper responded, “somewhat, they picked it up a little bit.”

He said that the emotional toll has been more concerning however.

“I'm not terribly worried about it, the whole week I felt like I was caught in a nightmare that I couldn't wake up from that all these things kept happening to people that I loved and they didn't seem to be connected in any way. To me the emotional toll has been much deeper than worrying about security,” Hickenlooper said.

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Fox: Americans Need Assault Weapons To Protect Themselves From An Iranian Invasion, Al Qaeda

During a roundtable discussion on Friday, Fox News’ Lou Dobbs agreed with a network contributor who argued that Americans need to access military-style assault weapons to protect themselves from an Iranian invasion.

“What scares the hell out of me we have a president, as we were discussing during break, that wants to take away our guns, but yet he wants to attack Iran and Syria. So if they come and attack us here, we don’t have the right to bear arms under this Obama administration,” Angela McGlowan, a former lobbyist for News Corp., said in the midst of a conversation about violence in Syria.

Dobbs quickly agreed, adding, “we’re told by Homeland Security that there are already agents of Al Qaeda here working in this country. Why in the world would you not want to make certain that all American citizens were armed and prepared? ” Watch it:

The panel also falsely argued that widespread gun ownership in Israel has helped prevent terrorist attacks, though access to firearms is strictly limited to people who “can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger.” Approximately “170,000 guns are licensed for private use in Israel,” while assault weapons are “banned for private ownership.”

[HT: MMFA]

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Obama: Assault weapons ban 'deserves a vote' in full Senate, House

President Obama on Thursday applauded the Senate Judiciary Committee's approval of a renewed assault weapons ban and called for a vote on the proposal in the full Senate and House, hours after Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he wasn't sure if he would include the ban in his gun control package.

"The full Senate and the House need to vote on this bill, as well as the measures advanced in the past week that would impose serious penalties on anyone who buys a gun as part of a scheme to arm criminals, improve school safety, and help keep guns out of the hands of criminals, people with a severe mental illness, and others who shouldn’t have them," Obama said in a statement released by the White House. "Each of these proposals deserves a vote."

Reid, who has opposed a renewed assault weapons ban in the past, said Thursday he has not yet decided whether the package he brings to the floor for a vote will include restrictions that would ban the sale and manufacture of 150 semi-automatic weapons with military-style features.

"I'm going to talk to [Sen. Patrick] Leahy [(D-Vt.)] about that," he told reporters after a leadership press conference. "I'm not going to worry about it here. Everybody will have their chance."

Some Democrats have said that omitting the assault weapons ban, which is strongly opposed by Republicans and some Democratic members, would improve the chances of other gun controls -- including expanded background checks and new laws governing the trafficking of firearms -- being passed.

But in his statement Thursday, Obama again left little doubt that he wanted a vote on the assault weapons ban.

"These weapons of war, when combined with high-capacity magazines, have one purpose: to inflict maximum damage as quickly as possible. They are designed for the battlefield, and they have no place on our streets, in our schools, or threatening our law enforcement officers," Obama said.

The ban, sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), passed the Judiciary Committee in a 10-8 party-line vote.

- Jonathan Easley and Alexander Bolton contributed.

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Dem Senator Pushes For Change In Military Response To Sexual Assault

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is bringing the ongoing crisis of sexual assault in the military into the spotlight, hoping to use a recent outrageous case as a springboard to change.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel, chaired by Gillibrand, met on Wednesday to begin the process of reforming the military justice’s handling of sexual assault cases, speaking to panels of both survivors of sexual assault in the military and top military law experts.

Gillibrand appeared on MSNBC on Thursday to present the hearing’s findings, leaving host Andrea Mitchell stunned. Over 19,000 allegations of Military Sexual Trauma (MST) were made in 2011 alone, but as Gillibrand informed Mitchell there were only 2,400 cases where action was taken. The disparity, according to Gillibrand, comes from fear of retaliation and “not being able to stay in the military and having no ability to be promoted.”

Both women shared their disbelief that the military justice system could take such a lax approach to a clear problem:

MITCHELL: I don’t understand the Military Code of Justice, in that it was a reason for dismissal for expulsion from the military until last year, if you violated Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Yet, if you were found guilty in a military court of a criminal assault, of rape, you could go back to your unit. How is that possible?

GILLIBRAND: It’s outrageous and it’s something that should outrage every American. When we look at our best and bravest, our strongest, our most courageous. When you enter the military, you may expect to lose a limb. You may expect to lose your life. But no one should be expecting to be assaulted or raped by one of their colleagues.

Watch their exchange here:

The permissive culture towards sexual violence Gillibrand described was underscored by the testimony of former Sgt. Rebekkah Havrilla. Havrilla told the subcommittee of the U.S. Army’s failure to provide proper assistance following several instances of alleged sexual assault and rape. At one point, an Army chaplain told Havrilla “that the rape was God’s will and that God was trying to get my attention so that I would go back to church.”

“Rape and assault are violent, traumatic crimes, not mistakes, leadership failures or oversights in character,” Anu Bhagwati, Co-Founder of the Service Women’s Action Network told the panel. Bhagwati offered a series of possible reforms to the military criminal justice system to the senators, including opening civil courts to military sexual assault victims.

Currently, the Uniform Military Code of Justice features an article that allows a commanding officer through his or her “convening authority” to overturn the conviction of a jury in courts-martial. Lt. Gen. Craig Franklin used that ability last week to overturn Lt. Col. James Wilkerson’s conviction of sexual assault, waive the one-year prison sentence, and reinstate Wilkerson in the Air Force. Under the law as written, Franklin’s decision can’t be overturned by the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Air Force.

Wilkerson’s reinstatement has sparked outrage from both houses of Congress and prompted a review of the statute in question by the Department of Defense’s top lawyers. A bill has already been introduced in the House of Representatives related to the Wilkerson case. Reps. Jackie Spiers (D-CA), Bruce Braley (D-IA), and Patrick Meehan (R-PA) put forward the bill on Tuesday to strip commanders of their ability to overrule juries and lessen sentences.

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Manchin: 'I do not support an assault weapons ban'

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said Monday that he opposes an assault weapons ban.

Speaking on MSNBC, Manchin, who has an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association and in December called for federal action to reduce gun violence, said he thinks there's a better way to reduce mass shootings without introducing new restrictions for gun owners.

"I do not support an assault weapon ban because the definition of assault weapon is still hard to come by," Manchin said. "So I am not going to comment on people's legislation. I do not support that approach right now."

Manchin is part of a quartet of legislators working to tighten background checks required to purchase a gun. The other members of the group are Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.).

Manchin has been a prominent legislator in the debate on reducing gun violence that arose in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shootings in December that resulted in 28 dead. Manchin, along with a number of other legislators, have called for action to reduce gun violence. He has previously stressed, however, that his call for action did not necessarily mean a call for banning guns.

"Everything has to be talked about. But you know what?…I'm not supporting a ban on anything. I'm supporting a conversation on everything," Manchin said in December to a local West Virginia radio station.

While both Republicans and Democrats have signaled an openness to new legislation aimed at reducing gun violence, lawmakers seem more divided over an assault weapons ban. President Obama has called for an assault weapons ban while critics say that restriction would go too far. Last month Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) formally introduced legislation reinstating an assault weapons ban. The last ban expired in 2004.

On Sunday Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said he was "skeptical" of a new assault weapons ban.

"You can take exactly the same mechanics of a gun and change the stock from a wooden stock to a folding stock and put something on the barrel, and suddenly it meets the definition of an assault weapon," King said. "It doesn't shoot faster, further, anything else."

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Democratic Senator: ‘We Do Have Support’ For An Assault Weapons Ban

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) pledged to include an assault weapons ban in any legislation designed to improve gun safety and insisted, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, that “we do have support” for such a provision.

The California Democrat, who introduced legislation banning 150 assault weapons earlier this week, conceded that the ban would present an “uphill fight,” but said that Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised that she could introduce the proposal as an amendment should it not be included in the comprehensive gun safety bill that advances to the Senate floor:

FEINSTEIN: This has been an uphill fight. This has never been easy. This is the hardest of the hard. Now, will it only be assault weapons? No. Most likely there will be a package put together. If assault weapons is left out of the package and I’m a member of the Judiciary number two in seniority. I’ve been assured by the Majority Leader I will be able to do it as an amendment on the floor. Which is the way I did it in 1993. So that doesn’t particularly bother me. [...]

Do military style assault weapons belong on the streets of our cities? And the answer, according to the United States Conference of Mayors, according to the major chiefs of police, according to the largest police organization in the world, is absolutely no. So we do have support. Don’t mistake it.

Feinstein attributed the tepid support for a ban in the Senate to the National Rifle Association, which she called “venal” and said will come after Senators and “put large amounts of money together to defeat you.”

The senator also agreed that armed security may help prevent school shootings, noting that “one-third of the schools in America today have school guards.” But, she insisted, “having school guards really isn’t the whole answer. The more you have these weapons, these military style weapons that with the single stock of the AR-15 can be made fully automatic, the minute you have it in the Sandy Hook killer’s hands, you have a devastating weapon.”

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How To Convince The NRA That Assault Weapons, Not The Media, Are Responsible For Gun Massacres

Stephen King — best selling author of the very kind of violent books that gun advocates say contribute to gun violence — has penned Guns, a 25-page essay dismissing their criticism, while calling for universal background checks for gun purchases, and a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

A self-described “blue-state American” who also owns guns, King is no stranger to how individuals can and do turn to art as inspiration for violence. During the 1990s, no fewer than four shooters read Rage — an early work King wrote in high school years and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman years later — entered their high schools with guns, held students and teachers hostage, and in some cases killed them. The book chronicles how Charlie Decker, a troubled high school student with a “domineering father,” brought a gun to school, killed his algebra teacher, and held his class hostage — only to see his classmates experience a “psychological inversion” and come to his defense.

After copies of Rage were discovered in the possession of multiple high school shooters, King voluntarily pulled the book from publication. He did so not because the thin tome inspired would-be killers to commit unspeakable carnage; rather it acted “as a possible accelerant” for boys who spent time in psych wards pondering suicide or endured the kind of bullying that results in severe medical paranoia. These boys found a “soul brother” in Decker. He gave them “blueprints to express their hate and rage” and for that, King decided, he “had to go.” “You don’t leave a can of gasoline where a boy with firebug tendencies can lay hands on it,” the author writes in Guns.

But while art that taps into the heart of a troubled soul can “accelerate” violence, there is little evidence that it causes it. Those arguments, often advanced by conservative lawmakers with A ratings from the National Rifle Association — and the NRA itself — “throw popular culture into the debate in the hopes that it’ll be distracting chum to piranhas hungry for scapegoats but reluctant to fight difficult battles to make America safer.” They also avoid any examination of the “state of our own popular culture and the profound fears about justice, disempowerment, and the state of civil society that are reflected in it.”

As King puts it, “To claim that America’s ‘culture of violence’ is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer.” Americans consume relatively high levels of gun violence, but we’re not acting out in response to it. Nor are we completely saturating ourselves in it. For instance, King observes that only two of the 10 most popular works of fiction in 2012 featured violence. Just one of the top-grossing movies of 2012 (Skyfall) showed gun killings. Sports, dance, and Mario Brothers are the nation’s most popular video games, and football and detective shows consistently score the highest television ratings.

In the coming days and weeks, gun manufacturers and lobbyists will spend millions convincing American gun owners who actually support sensible regulations that they are “under siege” from President Obama’s government. They’ll argue that the administration’s proposed universal background checks for all gun purchasers and waiting periods are tantamount to big brother keeping tabs on Americans who own firearms, and say that limiting the availability of military-style assault weapons that can fire off tens of bullets in rapid succession without reloading would leave Americans defenseless from home intruders or a government takeover.

They’ll deflect attention from guns and propose expanding access to mental health services, stationing guards in schools, and of course clamping down on the media’s glorification of violence. “One only wishes [NRA Executive VIce President and CEO] Wayne LaPierre and his NRA board of directors could be drafted to some of these [school shooting] scenes, where they would be required to put on booties and rubber gloves and help clean up the blood, the brains, and the chunks of intestine still containing the poor wads of half-digested food that were some innocent bystander’s last meal,” King writes. Maybe then they’ll focus less on the make-believe death in media and the very real destruction that open access to military-style weapons can cause.

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Gun Industry Aims To Sell Youth On Assault Weapons

Responding to Americans’ declining interest in shooting sports, gun manufacturers are developing programs to market their products to younger children. The National Shooting Sports Foundation trade association and the industry-funded National Rifle Association spend millions of dollars annually to recruit kids as gun enthusiasts. And those efforts increasingly focus on pushing semi-automatic assault weapons, including the very model used by the shooter in the Newtown, Connecticut tragedy.

The New York Times reports:

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent.

“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!”

The industry’s youth-marketing effort is backed by extensive social research and is carried out by an array of nonprofit groups financed by the gun industry, an examination by The New York Times found. The campaign picked up steam about five years ago with the completion of a major study that urged a stronger emphasis on the “recruitment and retention” of new hunters and target shooters.

Federal law prohibits the sale of rifles to those under age 18. But through programs at Boy Scout camps and 4-H clubs, the NRA trains children on how to safely shoot single-shot rifles. And, according to the report: “Newer initiatives by other organizations go further, seeking to introduce children to high-powered rifles and handguns while invoking the same rationale of those older, more traditional programs: that firearms can teach ‘life skills’ like responsibility, ethics and citizenship.”

This effort seems eerily similar to the marketing strategy employed by the tobacco industry in the 1980s. Recognizing that the number of smokers in America was declining — and dying off — cigarette companies sought to addict underage children to ensure a continuing market for their product. A now infamous 1981 Philip Morris corporate memo noted that “[t]oday’s teenager is tomorrow’s potential regular customer, and the overwhelming majority of smokers first begin to smoke while still in their teens. In addition, the 10 years following the teenage years is the period during which average daily consumption per smoker increases to the average adult level. The smoking patterns of teenagers are particularly important to Philip Morris.”

One gun-industry study noted a similar need to “start them young,” observing that “stakeholders such as managers and manufacturers should target programs toward youth 12 years old and younger… This is the time that youth are being targeted with competing activities. It is important to consider more hunting and target-shooting recruitment programs aimed at middle school level, or earlier.”

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Defense Secretary: ‘I Don’t Know Why The Hell People Have To Have Assault Weapons’

President Obama’s new set of proposals on gun violence prevention are enjoying broad support within his administration — including the support of Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. The Secretary not only heads up the armed forces but is himself a veteran and hunter, making his recent comments in favor of the initiative salient to the heated debate of how gun owners will receive the proposals.

Speaking in front of troops, Panetta’s comments came after a soldier critiqued that Obama was “tearing apart our Second Amendment.” In a (fairly foul-mouthed) defense, Panetta pointed out exactly how they relate to the military:

“Who the hell needs armor-piercing bullets except you guys in battle?” Panetta told the soldiers at the U.S. Army Garrison Vicenza in northern Italy. “For the life of me, I don’t know why the hell people have to have assault weapons.”

Panetta, who said he believes in the Second Amendment and has been a longtime duck hunter, was asked about the issue by a soldier who wanted to know what steps the Obama administration was going to take to deal with attacks in schools that “don’t have to do with tearing apart our Second Amendment.”

The Secretary is not the only military man to lend his voice to Obama’s cause. Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former Commander of US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, voiced his own support for Obama’s initiative yesterday.

Law enforcement officials have also lent their weight to the call for stronger gun safety laws. Former New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir called for more responsible gun laws in an op-ed yesterday — and his opinion has been widely echoed by local law enforcement who daily witness the dangers of firearms.

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Supreme Court Allows Assault On Stem Cell Research To Die

Two years ago, Reagan-appointed Chief Judge Royce Lamberth suspended all federal funding for embryonic stem cell research in a sweeping opinion that even invalidated funding permitted under President George W. Bush’s policies. Despite the fact that the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations all agreed that Judge Lamberth misinterpreted federal law, Lamberth relied on a federal law forbidding funding of “research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed” to hold that federal spending not only cannot fund the destruction of a new embryo, it also cannot fund research that builds on past research that resulted in the destruction of an embryo.

Lamberth’s decision was eventually reversed by a conservative panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The appeals court held, correctly, that even though Lamberth might have proposed a plausible reading of federal law, longstanding Supreme Court precedent generally requires courts to defer to an agency’s reading of a statute. As the appeals court explained, “the plaintiffs are unlikely to prevail because Dickey-Wicker is ambiguous and the NIH seems reasonably to have concluded that, although Dickey-Wicker bars funding for the destructive act of deriving an [embryonic stem cell] from an embryo, it does not prohibit funding a research project in which an [embryonic stem cell] will be used.” Yesterday, the Supreme Court announced it would not hear this case, effectively killing this challenge to stem cell research.

This is an important victory for science, and it is just as much a victory for judicial restraint. As the near-success of the Affordable Care Act lawsuits demonstrate, conservative judges and justices are increasingly willing to substitute their policy preferences for the law, even when they must rely on legal theories that, in the words of one of the nation’s most conservative judges, have no basis “in either the text of the Constitution or Supreme Court precedent.” The requirement that judges defer to agencies in interpreting ambiguous statutes is an important check on the judiciary’s ability to impose their policy views on the nation. Agency leaders change with each presidential election; judges do not. And so the power to interpret a genuinely ambiguous statute should rest with officials whose legitimacy flows more closely from the will of the people.

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Gohmert: 'Any weapon' is an assault weapon

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Friday that he would not support efforts for a renewed assault weapons ban, because "any weapon" — including hammers and machetes — could qualify as an "assault weapon."

"I refuse to play the game of 'assault weapon,' " Gohmert said on the "Dennis Miller Show," as first reported by ThinkProgress. "That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers."

The term "assault weapon" was defined in the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban as certain firearms, the majority of which were semi-automatic and possessed cosmetic features mirroring those on military or fully automatic weapons. Opponents of the ban have argued that features like pistol grips, threaded barrels, or telescoping stocks do not actually increase the lethality of a weapon.

At a press conference last month, White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president will "actively support" efforts by Democrats to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban, which sunset during the Bush administration. Obama pledged to address gun violence in his second term after the Connecticut elementary school shooting that left 26 dead.  "He wants to move in the coming weeks, which is a fairly short period of time," Carney said. "And while he supports, and strongly, renewal of the assault weapons ban, and strongly other measures, he wants to expand the conversation beyond those specific areas of legislation to look at other ways we can address this problem.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has pledged to introduce an updated version of the bill sometime this month.

That bill would outlaw 100 specifically named firearms, along with any weapon that can accept detachable magazines and handguns with fixed magazines that can accept more than 10 rounds.

Gohmert has previously suggested that he believes school officials should be armed to prevent future violence, and suggested that had the slain principal at Sandy Hook Elementary School had a gun, the shooter may have been stopped.

"I wish to God she had had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out and she didn't have to lunge heroically with nothing in her hands. But she takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," Gohmert told Fox News.

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Former NRA President: Banning Assault Weapons Is Like Banning People of Color

The National Rifle Association has repeatedly thumbed its nose at calls for stronger gun safety measures after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. Current NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre shocked many by attacking these efforts and calling instead for armed guards in every school. Still, on Wednesday, past NRA President Marion Hammer took the lobbying organization’s pro-gun radicalism to new heights.

On NRA’s news show, Hammer warned that gun owners are “in for a massive fight like we’ve probably never seen before,” in which the government will take guns away “in order to control the masses.”

When asked about proposals to ban certain kinds of assault weapons, Hammer also charged that guns are suffering discrimination similar to racism against people of color:

HOST: And they even admit it’s about banning the ugliest guns. They admit it.

HAMMER: Banning people and things because of the way they look went out a long time ago, but here they are again. The color of a gun, the way it looks. It’s just bad politics.

Watch it:

Despite a string of mass shootings and casualties in recent years, the NRA’s clout has effectively stifled conversation about America’s gun violence problem. But with the public’s renewed horror at the deaths of 28 people in Newtown, most of them children, the gun lobby’s grip may be slipping. Democrats introduced a slew of gun safety bills on the first day of the new Congress that would ban high capacity magazines, certain kinds of assault weapons, and close the gun show loophole that allows people to buy guns without a background check.

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Republican Congressman Claims Hammers Could Be Outlawed Under Assault Weapons Ban

Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX)

A Republican congressman lambasted the push for gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, stating on Friday that if lawmakers wanted to ban assault weapons, they would have to outlaw “hammers” and “machetes” as well.

Appearing on the Dennis Miller Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told guest host Larry O’Connor that he “refuse[s] to play the game of ‘assault weapon.’ That’s any weapon,” said the Texas congressman. “It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes.”

O’CONNOR: I want to ask you a question about one of your colleagues, Rep. Peter King in New York. He’s a very passionate guy, a great defender, he’s a great patriot. But he’s on board with this assault weapons ban. He was actually on MSNBC yesterday, openly saying, “I don’t understand why anybody would need an assault weapon.” I personally get nervous whenever a politician is asking me as a citizen why I need my right, but can you answer that question for your colleague? He might need some help here. Why would anyone need an assault weapon as they’re defining it?

GOHMERT: I refuse to play the game of “assault weapon.” That’s any weapon. It’s a hammer. It’s the machetes. In Rwanda that killed 800,000 people, an article that came out this week, the massive number that are killed with hammers.

Listen to it:

According to the FBI, in 2010, there were 8,775 people who were murdered with guns, compared to 540 people who were killed with blunt objects, a small minority of which were people armed with hammers. The exponentially-higher number of people killed by guns also includes many innocent people killed by indiscriminate gunfire, such as drive-by shootings. After all, there are no “drive-by hammerings.”

Still, hammers are not the only “weapon” that conservatives are equating with firearms in an attempt to undermine any gun control legislation. A state representative in New Hampshire, warned of another deadly weapon: credit cards. “Anything can be used as a deadly weapon, said Rep. Dan Dumaine (R). “A credit card can be used to cut somebody’s throat.”

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Sen. Graham vows to oppose new federal assault weapons ban

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) pledged Sunday to oppose legislation to reinstate the federal assault weapons ban.

"I think the assault weapons ban didn't work then. It's not going to work now, and I will oppose it," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday."

Graham's opposition comes as a number of legislators prepare to push new measures to reduce gun violence in response to a shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. that claimed the lives of 27, including 20 children. 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) plans to introduce a new federal assault weapons ban in the next Congress. And on Sunday, President Obama said he wanted to sign into law new gun-control measures in 2013. 

Graham said the last assault weapons ban, which lasted for ten years, was ineffective.

"Well, we had the assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 and the conclusion was, it did not change crime by banning assault weapons in an appreciable way, and last year with the lowest murder rate in the history of the United States, people buying more guns, murder rates have gone down -- you are talking about preventing mass murder by mentally unstable persons," Graham said. "You can't take every sharp object out of the reach of people like this."

Graham suggested he supported a proposal by the National Rifle Association (NRA) to post armed guards in schools to prevent shooting massacres similar to Sandy Hook. 

"I own an AR-15 and I have done nothing wrong by owning the gun. If you had armed security, with better rules of engagement, that, to me, is a better way to deal with the situation," Graham said. "And the best way is to identify these people before they act and do something about it."

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Obama’s Continuing Assault on the Law, History, and Facts

In the wake of President Obama’s moronic and widely-lampooned comments on judicial review yesterday, President Obama offered the following lame (and incorrect) walkback today:

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, first of all, let me be very specific. We have not seen a Court overturn a law that was passed by Congress on a economic issue, like health care, that I think most people would clearly consider commerce — a law like that has not been overturned at least since Lochner.  Right?  So we’re going back to the ’30s, pre New Deal.

And the point I was making is that the Supreme Court is the final say on our Constitution and our laws, and all of us have to respect it, but it’s precisely because of that extraordinary power that the Court has traditionally exercised significant restraint and deference to our duly elected legislature, our Congress.  And so the burden is on those who would overturn a law like this.

The President, of course, is once again either displaying complete ignorance or cynical hackery. Our federal Congress, per the constitution, is a Congress of enumerated powers. It may only do the things which it is authorized to do under Article 1, Section 8. The onus is always on Congress to demonstrate that its actions have fallen within one of its enumerated powers, not on a person challenging an act of Congress to demonstrate that Congress has acted without those powers. However, more importantly, as Powerline pointed out, Obama has once again also gotten his history wrong:

 Is there any truth to Obama’s claim that the Supreme Court hasn’t invalidated any statutes that are “economic” and relate to “commerce” since Lochner v. New York, which was in 1905? Of course not. To name just a few examples a great deal more recent than 1905, the Court ruled unconstitutional provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that had permitted only “for cause” removal of members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in 2010; the 1990 Mushroom Promotion, Research and Consumer Information Act in 2001 (this case was actually quite similar to Obamacare because the Court held unconstitutional provisions that required mushroom growers to contribute to mushroom promotion programs); provisions of the Patent and Plant Variety Remedy Clarification Act, the Trademark Remedy Clarification Act, and the Copyright Remedy Clarification Act in 1992; the Harbor Maintenance Tax Act in 1998; the Transfer Act which authorized the transfer of operating control of Washington National Airport and Dulles International Airport from the Department of Transportation to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority in 1991; and many, many more dating back to 1905.

Obama’s bungling on this (which has yet to be called a “gaffe” or more properly “a series of lies” by anyone I’ve yet seen in the media) prompted the Fifth Circuit yesterday to ask a DOJ lawyer who was litigating a case concerning Obamacare to clarify whether the DOJ was now taking the position that the federal judiciary did not have the power to overturn Obamacare. Some folks on the left went absolutely apopleptic over this, because it was an unusual event. Mostly, however, that is because most lawyers aren’t cursed with clients who are dumb enough to say, on the news, that the court currently deciding their case has no legitimate authority to do so. As was pointed out at Hot Air, Obama is the head of the DOJ and the Fifth Circuit was entitled to know if Obama’s statements signaled a change in the government’s position during this litigation.

One final point is in order here, which is to clarify for President Obama what is meant by an activist judiciary. An activist judiciary is not one that strikes down laws passed by Congress. An activist judiciary is one that strikes down laws passed by Congress for reasons that cannot be fairly said to be contained within the text of the Constitution, or more properly one that invents law from the bench.

Allow me to helpfully illustrate. Most conservatives were in favor (generally speaking) of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, which was  passed with broad, bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress. When the Supreme Court struck this act down, I don’t recall any conservative accusing the Court of engaging in judicial activism, because the Court’s reason for striking the bill down was firmly rooted in the text of the Constitution. By way of contrast, an excellent example of judicial activism would be virtually every SCOTUS Eighth Amendment decision for the last 65 years. The plain text of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments indicate that the government can constitutionally take a person’s life (so long as he or she is afforded due process of law). At the time these amendments were enacted, capital punishment was virtually the uniform punishment for all felonies. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has taken it upon itself to declare the death penalty unconstitutional for every crime other than murder, despite the fact that neither the text of the constitution nor history compels this result. At one point, the Supreme Court actually declared that the death penalty was unconstitutional, despite the fact that the constitution explicitly provides for the death penalty. This is what is meant by “judicial activism,” not “striking down statutes that were passed by Congress.”

It would be helpful, if the President wants to debate using conservative terms, if he took the time to understand what they meant.

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