Quotes of the day

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday she would introduce a bill re-instating the federal ban on assault weapons on the first day of the new Congress in January…

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President Obama “is going to have a bill to lead on,” Feinstein said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The measure, she said, would aim to take “weapons of war off the streets of our cities.” “It can be done,” she added.

“It will ban the sale, the transfer, the importation and the possession, not retroactively, prospectively. And it will ban the same for big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets,” Feinstein said of her proposal.

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“I think we could be at a tipping point for two reasons, a tipping point where we might actually get something done,” Schumer said on CBS’s “Face the Nation”. “First this was not a single incident, it followed a series of others.”

Schumer noted mass shootings earlier this year in Colorado, where a masked gunman killed 12 in a movie theater, Oregon, where a 22-year-old man killed two with an assault rifle, and Wisconsin, where the estranged husband of a spa employee, killed three people.

“Second, of course, it involved children,” Schumer said of the Newtown killings…

“Reinstate the assault weapons ban, limit the size of clips to maybe no more than 10 bullets per clip, and the third would be to make it harder for mentally unstable people to get guns,” he said.

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They all say something must be done – the same thing they say after each horrific mass murder. But nothing is ever done. The truth is that Capitol Hill has been paralyzed on gun issues for most of this generation, having last approved major gun laws, including the “Brady bill” and the now-expired assault weapons ban, in 1994. Since then, the needle has moved toward fewer restrictions on guns and ammunition…

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But there’s little reason for congressional gun-control advocates to believe that this tragedy will spark a rush to legislate. When Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and the White House from January 2009 to January 2011, they didn’t reauthorize the assault weapons ban or put any other gun laws on the books. Party leaders have been afraid of a potential political backlash against culturally conservative Democrats from swing states, some of whom want to keep the National Rifle Association in their camp – or at least on the sidelines…

[Rep. Carolyn] McCarthy has said she’s willing to embarrass Obama publicly if he doesn’t take up the issue – and that’s what she conveyed to the White House before Friday’s killings.

“I agree this is not the time to talk about [gun control],” she told POLITICO’s Reid Epstein. “It should have been talked about years ago when we started having these mass shootings. It should have been done when Gabby Giffords was shot.”

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Hollywood has responded to the rampage at a Connecticut elementary school by pulling back on its offerings, and one star says the entertainment industry should take some responsibility for such violence.

Jamie Foxx, one of the industry’s biggest stars, said Saturday as he promoted Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming ultra-violent spaghetti Western-style film about slavery, “Django Unchained,” that actors can’t ignore the fact that movie violence can influence people.

“We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn’t have a sort of influence,” Foxx said in an interview on Saturday. “It does.”

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In a discussion about America’s mental health system, Crowley and asked Hickenlooper whether the “culture of guns” creates a situation in which gun crimes are inevitable. “There is very little you can do to stop a determined person, do you feel that way,” Crowley asked.

Hickenlooper agreed wholeheartedly, and said we need to have “more people paying attention and trying to detect folks that are unstable” or “on the verge of real trouble.”

He went on to say our violent culture, including the “depiction of assault weapons again and again” in video games and the media contributes to gun crimes. The governor also suggested that the criminals might, in their minds, “become part of the video games” when they carry out these tragic crimes.

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I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me…

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am Jason Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness

I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population.

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No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”

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Brooks said that, while he greatly admires Mayor Bloomberg, he is unsure that a big city mayor is the most effective spokesperson for the cause of gun control.

“One of the problems with this debate; it’s become a values war. It’s perceived as urban versus rural. And, frankly, it’s perceived as an attack on the lifestyle of rural people by urban people. And, I admire Mayor Bloomberg enormously – there’s probably no politician I agree with more – but it’s counterproductive to have him as the spokesperson for the gun law movement. There has to be more respect and more people, frankly, from rural and red America who are participants in this.”

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“I’m not sure so — and I’m sure I’ll get nailed for this — I wouldn’t want one person in a school armed, ready for this kind of thing,” Bennett said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“It has to be someone who is trained, it has to be someone who is responsible,” he said. “But my God, if you can prevent this kind of thing.”

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“It’s time for the president, I think, to stand up and lead and tell this country what we should do.”

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I wish to God (the principal) had had an M4 in her office, locked up, so when she heard gunfire she pulls it out … and takes him out, takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids,” the Republican from Texas said on “Fox News Sunday.”…

“Every mass killing of more than three people in recent history has been in a place where guns were prohibited, except for one,” he said, arguing for looser gun laws so more people can be armed for self-protection. “They know no one will be armed.”

Via Gateway Pundit:

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Via the Daily Caller.

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