Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, April 25, 2013
Pew:
In the four months since the Newtown, Connecticut shootings, the tone of the conversation about gun control on Twitter has shifted sharply several times in apparent response to ongoing events, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of nearly 21 million tweets from December 18 through April 21.
NY Times talks immigration reform prospects, but could be talking about gun laws or anything else:
“I think the opposition is counting on mistrust of government, hatred of Obama and the idea that Congress can’t get anything right to combine as the pathway to no,” said Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group.
Interest waning? No.
Mediaite:
Politicians counting on Americans to forget about Newtown when they go to the ballot box next year may be in for a surprise. A pair of recent PPP polls shows that “no” votes from Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Jeff Flake(R-AZ, NRA rating=A), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK, NRA rating=A), Mark Begich (D-AK, NRA rating=D),Rob Portman (R-OH, NRA rating=A), and Dean Heller (R-NV, NRA rating=A) have dropped them into varying degrees of hot water with voters. Another poll from Pew showed that, while overall dissatisfaction with the vote did not match the 90% approval of background checks, many more Americans were disappointed or angry about the Senate’s failure to pass background checks than those who were relieved or happy.
A pair of new polls shows that even in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the public’s interest in the gun control debate has actually increased, and the number of Americans who identify guns as the most important problem facing this country is equal to the number who answer “terrorism” to the same question.
Gun safety advocates are not going away. Intensity is not on the side of gun rights. It does not hurt politiclans to vote for background checks.
5 y.o.s should not have guns, even in Kentucky. And what other myths do you want addressed?
How about the deep paranoia of Republicans that the media who tut-tut Obama's record are afraid to tell you about?
Poll: 29% Think Armed Rebellion Might Soon Be Necessary
The eye-opening findings serve as a reminder that Americans’ deeply held beliefs about gun rights have a tendency to cross over into outright conspiracy theories about a nefarious government seeking to trample the Second Amendment — paranoia that pro-gun groups like the National Rifle Association have at times helped stoke. The data help explain why even the most modest gun safety laws face tremendous, intense opposition.
NY Times:
“I’m for stricter gun laws, but the reason I favor the Republicans over the Democrats and the liberals on gun laws is because they have always been against the Second Amendment and the right to own guns,” said Jim Hensley, 69, a Republican from Grandville, Mich., in an interview after the poll was conducted.
“Yes, I believe the Republicans should have voted for background checks, and they should not legalize automatic weapons,” Mr. Hensley added. “I was against the repeal of the ban on automatic weapons, and I don’t support the N.R.A. But it’s like marriage. You stick with your wife no matter what, and you don’t just ditch your political party on one issue.”
Voting is tribal, not logical. Sometimes you simply need to win rather than worry about convincing everyone of the whys and wherefores.
Two weeks after a bipartisan measure that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers was defeated in the Senate, nearly 9 in 10 of those surveyed said they favored background checks on all gun buyers, and 6 in 10 said they were disappointed or angry with the vote.
Want
intensity? You're looking at it.
Tragic. LA Times:
A 2-year-old Kentucky girl was accidentally killed by her 5-year-old brother who fired a rifle he had been given as a gift, officials said Wednesday.
Cumberland County Coroner Gary L. White said an autopsy of Caroline Starks showed the toddler had died from a single shot from the .22-caliber rifle. The death has been ruled accidental and no charges will be filed, he said in a telephone interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“Most everybody in town is pretty devastated by this,” White said. “Nobody wants to take anyone’s guns away, but you’ve got to keep them out of harm’s way for the kids. It’s a safety issue.”
This is why pediatricians
fight to do anticipatory guidance and talk to families about gun safety.
Nature:
The sharing of flu-virus data and materials has long been a politically charged issue in global health. Timely information from potentially pandemic flu strains is crucial for efforts to monitor drug resistance and the evolution of viruses, and for the development of diagnostics and vaccines. But some countries have been reluctant to share such data because they have seen little in return in terms of collaboration, technology transfer or access to the drugs and vaccines developed as a result. ...
Kristine Sheedy, a spokeswoman for the US CDC, acknowledges that “there were differences in understanding and expectations regarding use of the Chinese H7N9 sequence data by several outside groups”, but adds that the US CDC was not among them. The CDC has had a strong ongoing collaboration with its counterpart in China since the start of the H7N9 outbreaks, she says.
Jonathan Bernstein:
One thing that does help Boehner is that no one wants the job under these conditions; a conservative coup led by Majority Leader Eric Cantor could probably have succeeded at several points over the last two years, but Cantor would then find himself in exactly the same place as Boehner — those must-pass bills, after all, still would need to pass, and they still would need majority support in the Democratic Senate and they would still need Barack Obama’s signature, which would still mean that most of his conference would oppose anything that could pass and blame the Speaker for supporting it.
Overall, however, Boehner has probably done about as well a job as anyone could given the circumstances. Unless, that is, there’s someone out there who could fix the broken Republican Party. But that’s probably beyond the ability of anyone, including any possible Speaker of the House.
Greg Sargent:
President Obama is getting widely mocked by commentators and Republicans for using the phrase “permission structure” at his presser yesterday in the course of claiming that Republican officials are constrained from cooperating with him because their base would see it as a “betrayal.”
So it’s good to have a Republican Senator on record confirming that Obama is right about this.
I’m talking about Pat Toomey. The Senator from Pennsylvania didn’t directly address Obama’s remarks, but something he said in another context perfectly confirms the President’s diagnosis of the GOP.
Matt Miller:
Hence Cantor’s “Help Sick Americans Now Act.” Let Republicans back an approach they’ve philosophically endorsed before, Cantor thought, and by funding it a bit more generously than Obama has, show that the GOP can solve a problem that haunts (and often bankrupts) luckless families.
That was the idea. Then — boom! — conservatives revolted. L. Brent Bozell III cried “Cantorcare.” The Club for Growth warned that a vote for the measure would be tantamount to supporting Obamacare on their coveted conservative score card. “We often say we don’t need this Democrat big-government program [but then say] we need this Republican big-government program,” harrumphed Rep. Trey Radel of Florida. Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas urged the party to skip this sideshow and get back to the real issues: the debt ceiling and spending cuts.
Wow. It almost makes you feel sorry for Cantor.