Much has been made recently how Secretary Clinton is insufficiently conservative for allegedly being a corporatist favorer of the top 1 percent to the exclusion of all others. Others have objected to Martin O'Malley as a liberal alternative because he was "tough on crime" in Baltimore. Often, commenters and diarists have been in the position of saying, "The other candidate has X position. He/she is therefore a Republican, a conservative, oligarch, and I hate him/her. I'm going to vote for someone else who is pure and stands for all my progressive principles."
Unfortunately, another mass shooting has sparked discussion regarding gun control. It would be much better for our society if we discussed this issue when there was not a terrible tragedy and instead constantly talked about it until the American obsession with ammo stockpiles and bigger and better guns ended. Nevertheless, the conversation has restarted and it is now primary season.
Many commentators want a pure progressive as the Democratic nominee. Recently there has been a diary calling on people to abstain from assisting the Democratic Party. Another has said that Secretary Clinton is disqualified due to her apostasy and we need to support Bernie Sanders instead.
Well, it's time for some evenhanded progressive treatment of the Democratic candidates. And with gun control returning to the American political conversation, let's push Bernie to explain why he voted against the Brady Bill's background check and 5 day wait period. Why did Senator Sanders say the following in the aftermath of Sandy Hook:
If you passed the strongest gun control legislation tomorrow, I don’t think it will have a profound effect on the tragedies we have seen.
Does he disavow the NRA, which some say put him into the House of Representatives?
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Does he regret voting to bar lawsuits against gun manufacturers for their role in gun violence? One commentator was particularly incensed that Senator Senators voted this way:
But Sanders’ vote for a different kind of pro-gun bill is more puzzling—and profoundly disturbing. In 2005, a Republican-dominated Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). This law doesn’t protect gun owners; it protects gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers. The PLCAA was the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association for years, because it shields gun makers and dealers from most liability when their firearms are used criminally. It is one of the most noxious pieces of pro-gun legislation ever passed. And Bernie Sanders voted for it. (Sanders’ campaign has not replied to a request for comment.)
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Before the PLCAA, most states imposed some form of tort liability on gun makers and sellers. If a gun manufacturer made an assault rifle that could slaughter dozens of people in a few seconds, for instance, one of its victims might sue the company for negligently making a gun that could foreseeably be used for mass murder. If a gun seller sold a gun to a customer without performing any kind of background check—and then the buyer opened fire on the subway—his victims might sue that seller for negligently providing a gun to a mentally unstable person. The standards in each state differed, but the bottom line remained the same: Victims of gun violence and their families could recover financially from the people and companies who negligently enabled gun violence.
The PLCAA changed all that. Remarkably, the act wiped out gun liability laws in all 50 states, rendering them invalid except for a handful of narrow exceptions. (So much for states’ rights.) Thanks to the law, victims of mass shootings are barred from suing the companies that produced a wartime weapon that no civilian could ever need. With few exceptions, victims cannot sue a gun seller for negligently providing a semiautomatic weapon to a lunatic who shoots them in a movie theater. Even if a jury decides a gun maker or seller should be liable, the PLCAA invalidates its verdict. The law tramples upon states’ rights, juries’ rights, and fundamental precepts of America’s civil justice system. And it received Bernie Sanders’ support—in both 2003 (when it was first introduced) and 2005 (when it finally passed).
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Senator Sanders' record needs to receive the same probing analysis as others in the news media and in this activity community have applied to Secretary Clinton. And, some folks should reconsider holding him up as all that is true and pure in the progressive community. Doing so will either push Senator Sanders closer to the purity so many expect or it will make him a better candidate.
Or, and this is my personal hope, his apostasy on this issue should make those in this community understand that all of the Democratic candidates have areas where they are less progressive than others. This does not automatically render that person a corporatist, a Republican, or a shrill in the pocket of the gun industry. It reflects the great diversity of opinion within our progressive umbrella and the political party in which we have self-sorted over the past 50 years.