Graham tells president to stop 'cheerleading' for new gun laws

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Wednesday he was unimpressed by the section of President Obama's State of the Union imploring Congress to allow a vote on new gun regulations, telling reporters the country doesn’t “need a cheerleader for new gun laws.”

“We need somebody to enforce the laws we have,” Graham said, according to CNN. “I do wish the cheerleading would stop and the prosecutions begin.”

Graham went on to say that only 44 of the 80,000 people who failed a background check last year were prosecuted, suggesting the Obama administration was lax in enforcing current gun rules. The vast majority of those failed background checks were not referred to the government for investigation, an indication that applicants may not have actually broken any laws.

Pressed on whether he believed everyone who failed a background check should be prosecuted, Graham acknowledged many would-be gun purchasers had likely made innocent mistakes.

“But in the case of–I can give you some examples, I should have brought them with me–that if you fail the background check you’re providing, you’ve got strawman purchases,” he said. “Here’s what I would suggest: Out of the 80,000, more than 44 probably did it illegally.”

President Obama made an impassioned plea for a vote on new gun controls toward the end of his State of the Union address Tuesday night. Victims of gun violence and their families filled the chamber, and members of Congress wore green ribbons as a tribute to the victims of the Newtown, Conn. elementary school shooting.

“Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote,” Obama said, to some of the evening's loudest applause.

The president plans to push his gun measures — which include universal background checks on all firearm purchases, a renewed assault weapons ban, and limits on magazine size — during events Friday at the White House and in Chicago. In Washington, he we posthumously award the Presidential Citizens Medal to six educators who were killed during the Newtown shooting.

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Before Calling 911, Sheriff Tells Residents To Get ‘In The Game’ With A Gun

Wisconsin County Sheriff David Clarke is facing backlash for telling Milwaukee, Wisconsin residents to get a gun for emergencies, rather than call 911. In a radio ad, Clarke claims personal and public safety is no longer a “spectator sport,” and urges civilians to “get in the game” before police arrive to a scene:

I’m Sheriff David Clarke, and I want to talk to you about something personal…your safety. It’s no longer a spectator sport; I need you in the game, but are you ready?

With officers laid-off and furloughed, simply calling 9-1-1 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back; but are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family. We’re partners now. Can I count on you?

Clarke told the Associated Press he chose to get “creative” about facing “fewer and fewer resources” in his department. “After sitting down and thinking about this, I’m thinking ‘Hey, I’ve got an untapped reserve over here, and it’s the public,’” he said.

While it is true police departments have thinned — thanks to Republican public sector budget cuts — Clarke has an absurd expectation that citizens could act as interim police officers, with minimal firearm training. Armed citizens usually do not stop violent crime, and their intervention only increases the danger and bloodshed, “given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances.”

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What The Daily Beast’s Absurd Vaccine Truther Screed Tells Us About Journalism

Pictured: The Daily Beast's approach to covering vaccination.

I’m not going to link to the execrable anti-vaccine screed published on The Daily Beast today. I’m not even going to link to the thoughtful, well-written counterpoint they published by a infectious disease specialist. To do either would reward a transparent attempt to gin up a pageview-inducing “controversy.” Moreover, it would treat the two pieces as if they were two sides of an argument, as opposed to medical fact and conspiratorial lunacy.

If you must read something on the topic, here‘s how many people die of influenza in the United States and here‘s an explanation of why vaccine panics aren’t worth taking seriously.

What’s particularly galling about The Daily Beast‘s vaccine “debate” is that it treats science criticism like punditry. Political writing is plagued by a consensus of bores, commentators who all have opinions within the same narrow band of “acceptable” views. The online journalism revolution opened this up a bit, but not nearly enough. Hence, as a matter of inclination, I’m reflectively skeptical about claims that editors should refuse to publish authors with certain political opinions simply because they’re “out of the mainstream.” More often than not, such arguments serve more to defend staid political views from challenge than anything else.

Science journalism has, if anything, the opposite problem. The basic task of a science journalist is to explain complicated scientific findings to people who don’t have the time or the expertise to learn it from primary sources. Increasingly, science journalists are acting as science critics as well as science expositors, but that doesn’t undermine the need to fully understand and embrace scientific methodology (if anything, it intensifies it). Science journalism, sadly, often fails in both of these roles. This generally happens when writers lack the time or background knowledge necessary to properly digest and explain the research in question.

That last problem is particularly pronounced because people have a tendency to accept science as fact. Setting aside (wrongly) politicized disciplines like climate science for the moment, people without scientific expertise reading write-ups of research findings are reasonably likely to accept them as fact. So science journalism needs to correct its flaws by more gatekeeping, not (as in politics) less. Editors should work to make sure that only people who are fair and knowledgeable observers of scientists’ work are in a position to explain easily-misinterpreted research to the public.

By setting up vaccination as an issue up for debate in the same way that political questions are, the Beast articles can leave a reader who isn’t aware of the overwhelming scientific consensus might simply throw up their hands (as happens in the climate debate) and say “who knows whose research is right?” But that’s not how it is. People who conclude that there’s a real case that the flu vaccine might do more harm than good are less likely to get flu vaccines, for them or their family. That makes people more likely to get sick and, possibly, die. There isn’t any real debate about this among epidemiologists. This should be settled.

Science journalism isn’t like political writing: it really could benefit from tighter editorial control on the sorts of views expressed. Judging by today, I wouldn’t look to The Daily Beast to point the way forward.

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Biden tells US Conference of Mayors that it is time to act on gun control

Vice President Biden’s address to nearly 300 of the country’s mayors on Thursday couldn’t have come at a better time for the administration’s push to rally public support for its proposals on reducing gun violence.

Biden, headlining the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., spoke of the Newtown, Conn., massacre as the clarion call for the administration’s proposals.

“Newtown ... affected the public psyche in a way I’ve never seen before,” Biden said. “The image of first-graders not just shot but riddled with bullets ... we have an obligation to respond intelligently to that crisis.”

Biden, who headed a task force that presented its recommendations to President Obama this week, said gun violence had become so regular in the country that small acts of violence didn’t shock the public anymore, a “coarsening” that he called “defining deviancy down.”

“We can no longer afford to define deviancy down,” he said. “We can’t wait any longer to take action. The time has come.”

The White House has support from many of the nation's big city mayors, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), and USCM President and Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter (D), both of whom have been vocal proponents of firearms restrictions.

Nutter opened the USCM meeting, and the room quieted as he recounted the high-profile mass shootings of the past decade, beginning with Columbine and moving on through Virginia Tech, Tucson and Aurora.

“But then Dec. 14,” Nutter said. “A tragedy in Newtown that even after all the others we still cannot imagine ... a terrible unforgivable moment in American history. We cannot get those lives back ... we can and we must act to help protect the lives of those in the future.

"This has nothing to do with taking guns away from those who lawfully own them," he said. "We respect the Second Amendment ... but the right to own a firearm should not interfere with my right to live.”

That line stirred the room to loud applause.

In the immediate aftermath of Newtown, the USCM sent an open letter to Obama and Biden urging immediate action on gun reform.

On Wednesday, Obama and Biden, flanked by children they said wrote to the White House about gun safety, unveiled 23 executive actions the president signed into law. Those measures include efforts to improve existing background checks and gun safety, and even encourage doctors to ask patients about guns in their homes.

Obama also pressed lawmakers to quickly implement universal background checks on all firearm purchasers and restore the federal ban on military-style assault weapons and a limit on the size of ammunition magazines.

“Clearly the President listened to our call,” the USCM said in a statement. “We applaud him for issuing executive actions to reduce gun violence. And we applaud him for calling for critically needed legislation and urge Congress 'to do the right thing' and institute universal background checks, a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and strengthening penalties for gun trafficking.”

Biden’s speech was the latest salvo in a high-stakes fight, as the White House looks to publicly pressure Congress to act on Obama’s demand for new gun-ownership restrictions.

Obama has sought to rally public support in past battles over taxes and spending, and is leveraging his high approval rating and recent opinion polls that show public support for tighter gun restrictions in an effort to pressure Congress to take action.

On Thursday, Obama wrote an op-ed for the Connecticut Post — based in Bridgeport, just 20 miles from Newtown — urging lawmakers to “act soon” on his recommendations.

Also on Thursday, the White House sent a letter signed by Biden to its public email list looking to rally support for the president’s proposals.

The email directs supporters to the White House’s new multimedia website on preventing gun violence. The site heading reads “Now is the time to do something,” and features videos of Obama speaking about gun reform and pictures of him visiting young victims in the hospital.

Congressional Republicans and the nation’s pro-gun-rights groups, most notably the National Rifle Association (NRA), have said they will oppose Obama’s actions and proposals on guns, accusing him of seeking to gut the Second Amendment with policies that will do little to make the public safer.

Biden on Thursday said the administration’s proposed reforms would comply with the Second Amendment, while acknowledging it was a difficult federal issue to tackle because of different gun cultures in different states. The vice president said his home state of Delaware had a much bigger gun culture than most realized, primarily for duck hunting.

Gun-rights activists say criminals won’t abide by the new laws Congress imposes, so the laws will only affect law-abiding gun owners. They also argue that the legislation Obama is trying to get from Congress has been proven ineffective in the past.

The NRA has vowed “the fight of the century” in opposing Obama’s proposed initiatives.

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First Lady Michelle Obama Tells North Carolina A&T University Class of 2012 "We Need You"

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Colleen CurtisMay 14, 2012
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Interim Provost Winser Alexander presents First Lady Michele Obama with a hood signifying her honorary degree following her commencement address during the North Carolina Agriculture & Technology commencement ceremony in Greensboro, N.C., May 12, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

First Lady Michelle Obama invoked the example of the "Greensboro Four" in her commencement address to North Carolina A&T University's class of 2012. More than half a century ago, four A&T students started the movement that led to desegregation at lunch counters across the country, and Mrs Obama said this shows what can happen when someone decides to "wake up and change the situation." The First Lady challenged the students to follow their lead:

As graduates of this proud university, as young people like those who always stoked the fires of progress, our country is counting on all of you to step forward and help us with the work that remains.  We need you.

Mrs Obama also challeged each member of the graduating class to think about what’s important, and ask themselves three questions:

Who are you going to be?What’s going on in the world around me? andHow can I help?

The answers, she said, would help the graduated keep their bearings as they advanced in their careers and in their lives as citizens: 

You’ve got to figure out what matters to you and stay true to those values. You’ve got to keep your eyes open as you make your way in the world....

The fact is, we simply cannot move forward unless all of us are engaged. And being engaged means not simply recognizing what’s wrong, not simply complaining about and talking about our problems, but acting. It means waking up and changing the situation.  And that’s a lesson that so many of you have already begun to learn during your time here at A&T... 
 
And with that kind of action and that kind of commitment, all of you have begun to carry on that proud legacy of the Greensboro Four.

Students react as First Lady Michele Obama delivers the commencement address at the North Carolina Agriculture & Technology commencement ceremony in Greensboro, N.C., May 12, 2012 (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

This was Mrs. Obama's second commencement address of 2012. You can read her full remarks here
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