Friday, May 3, 2013

The Senate on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan plan to expand background checks for gun buyers, dealing a crippling blow to President Barack Obama's campaign to curb gun violence after the Newtown school massacre.Despite emotional pleas from families of victims of the Newtown, Connecticut, shootings and broad public support nationwide, the plan to extend background checks to online and gun-show sales failed on a 54-46 vote, six short of the 60-vote hurdle needed to clear the Senate."All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington," an angry Obama said of the vote, adding the effort "is not over." Political momentum for new gun-control laws had dissipated after December's shooting. Opponents criticized the proposals as government overreach that would infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms, and the NRA mounted a strong lobbying effort against it. 
Anna 

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Blog Response Questions

1. My group and I experienced the project feeling very accomplished and more resourceful. As we are completing the project we feel like we have researched more into our topic gun control and have become more knowledgeable from our research for our blog. We all jumped right into the blog, but sometimes I felt that I (Kennedy) had difficulty getting into the blog only because my partners had better knowledge of gun control than I did.

2. Overall, I believe our group was happy with our topic of gun control and gun rights. Our topic was a hot topic of debate in the news just about the entire time we blogged, so we had a lot of information.

3. The most intriguing aspect of our topic we talked about was all of the information we got from Congress' debate and all of the opinion's of the people of the USA. This is the case because we had plenty of sources to go off of and a ton of media coverage over the gun control debate.

4. A central idea of our blog is to get stories out so people can form an opinion about gun control and gun rights. The theme of our blog is gun control and gun rights, more recently all of the shootings.

5. We have learned from this project that to get things done, we need to divide the work to get more done. Also we learned to work ahead so we do not have to worry about getting our blog in on time.

6. The most enjoyable part of this project was to everyone's personal opinion about our topic. We were all honest about what we thought about gun control and gun rights. We never argued over our opinions because we all respected our partner's personal thoughts.

7. The most difficult part of this project was finding appropriate videos and pictures. This was the most difficult because we wanted to respect everyone's view and did not want to offend anyone.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Gun Control Rection


-Kennedy
http://news.yahoo.com/video/gun-control-vote-reaction-032708443.html
With all the recent news of the Senate's debate and vote over new gun control laws, we have forgotten one important thing. The victims' families. They want justice for their loved ones. All of the shootings that have happened in our country, especially the most recent ones need justice. Personally I think the government should put some type of restraint on who and how guns are handled so it can lessen any terrible events. I know some of my co-bloggers would feel different but we need to come up with some kind of control so this does not happen again. I understand some people have guns to protect themselves but if a gun gets into the wrong hands, it's very dangerous. People need to think before they act. Guns aren't toys and should be handled with the utmost care. Since it took Congress awhile to decide what they were going to do, the public have slowly forgot about this problem we have in our country. We need to keep them in mind during these debates and until Congress reaches a decision.
-Kennedy

Photo Credit: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/04/24/poll-less-than-half-of-americans-upset-about-senate-gun-vote/

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Agree or disagree?


       As of yesterday, April 17, 2013, the Senate decided that they were refusing tighter background checks those who buy firearms and also they are not going to ban assault weapons, despite the efforts put forth by the families of those who were affected by the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary. Another proposal to loosen restrictions on concealed weapons carried across state lines also was not accepted. The biggest concern was that of the background checks because the people think that having tighter background checks for those who buy firearms will stop gun violence when in reality that is not necessarily true because those regulations would only fall in effect for those who buy firearms from only federally licensed dealers, and those potential assailants ever rarely buy from licensed dealers, so in order for that to remotely work, those regulations would have to extend out to those buying firearms on the Internet and even those buying guns at gun shows. I personally think that those regulations should be placed on background checks because I think that would cut down significantly on people buying guns that shouldn't be. Every person is entitled to their right of wanting to protect themselves and I think only those who are mentally and emotionally balanced and capable of owning a gun should. Below is the article that discussions all of the voting issues that occurred during this proposal and all of the arguments set forth by the senate and the citizens.
 
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2013/04/gun-control-2013-senate-rejects-gun-control-measure--87654.html 

Sunday, April 14, 2013


WASHINGTON -- It could last several weeks, but family members of victims and survivors of gun violence are planning to hold a round-the-clock vigil on Capitol Hill until the Senate passes gun policy reform.Demonstrations, spearheaded by allied progressive groups and faith-based organizations, have already precede ended  the senate vote  Thursday to allow a bill to enter debate and amendment period. Over 32 hours and 40 minutes, volunteers read the names of individuals killed in firearm-related instances since the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in December.Now that the Senate has begun debating the bill, which includes a compromise on expanding the background check system, the demonstration will begin again. Starting when the Senate reconvenes on Monday and continuing until senators vote on the final passage of a bill, volunteers will once again read the names of gun violence victims, regardless of time or weather.Arkadi Gerney, who is running the "NoMoreNames" vigil for the Center for American Progress, acknowledged that the action could go on for weeks. The amend-and-debate process is expected to feature a number of contentious items, and each could mean prolonged consideration and difficult vote gathering.Demonstrators, nevertheless, will be on the House of Representatives side of Capitol Hill reading the names of victims in 20-minute shifts. Guerney said there will be several prominent figures participating. Eddie Weingart, who witnessed his mother being shot and killed by her ex-husband when he was just two-and-a-half years old, will lead the vigil.Groups participating in No more names include the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Americans for Responsible Solutions, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Coalition To Stop Gun Violence, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, chapters of Million Mom March, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, Newtown Action Alliance, PICO National Network, Project to End Gun Violence, Protest Easy Guns, and Sojourners.
Anna 

Saturday, April 13, 2013

Brianna Nunez: Check Before You Sell

In New York times on April 11, 2013, repoters found a way that people can get guns off the internet illegaly. A woman named Zina Haughton, 42, put a reatraining order on her ex-husband. She had told reporters that his being threaten her every moment. With the restraining order he was unable to purchise any gun, but he found a loophole from a friend who had told him about buying one off the internet. Going by this certain website they were not obliged to do a background check on Haughton's ex-husband. This is how he was able to buy a $500 dollar gun in a parking lot. He then later went to the spa that his ex-wife worked at and shot her until he killed her and two other employes, he then killed himself. I'm not saying to deny everyone from buying a gun, but every business should do a bacground check that tells them who can purches a gun or not.

Friday, April 12, 2013

The Gun Control Debate Tackles First Vote

Kennedy Prewitt

Gun Control Debate in the Senate

The Senate voted 68 to 31, according to this article, to allow this debate to continue. Many spectators believe that prohibiting guns and the selling of guns will solve the problem of these random shootings. The Senate is thinking about doing the opposite. The are in the works of coming up with a bill for gun control, but it is still up in the air on what the bill will say about gun control. This article is speculating that the Senate will put less restrictions on guns. This is not what the families of the victims of any mass shootings want to hear.
My opinion is that loosening or tightening the gun laws is not going to stop some people from trying to get a gun. Either way the Senate votes and whatever the bill says in a couple of months, people will be upset by it. Many people also believe that if the Senate doesn't do something soon people will forget what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary.


Kennedy Prewitt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/gun-rights-advocates-see-senate-debate-as-an-opportunity-to-weaken-current-law/2013/04/12/c43c5290-a38a-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html
http://swampland.time.com/2013/04/11/senate-ready-to-launch-gun-control-debate/

Saturday, April 6, 2013

Media hides the truth

There are horrible stories floating around the media about guns for example the Georgia baby killer. A 17 year old boy and his partner just the age of 14 were arrested for shooting a 13 month baby in the face with a hand gun. The reason you may ask was for just some money, yes the only motive was to get some pocket change from the mother. Unfortunately she had nothing on her so the boy named De'Marquise Elkins turned the gun on the baby and shot him in the face after already shooting the mother in the left leg. Now the media is trying to connivence everyone that if guns were outlawed that this would of never happened. That statement alone is false; the boy is 17 so he already proses a gun illegally so outlawing guns won't stop criminals from buying them. It would only help them know that innocent  people have nothing to protect themselves with. The media only shows the bad and shocking stories of how guns are bad but under the cover we find double the stories that counteract that. There are more stories of guns saving lives then destroying them. For example there was a man in Rockwall Texas who saved a women from her angry ex boyfriend from being shot down. The reason was that the man who saved her was carrying a concealed weapon which he used to stop the ex boyfriend in his tracks. Another story was the Oregon Gun Owner Stops Clackamas Shooting Spree, Proving Guns Save Lives. The media only showed the bad of this story and have no credit to 22-year-old Nick Meli who stopped the murder from killing 29 people. If Nick Meli didn't have a concealed  hand gun then those 29 lives in clouding  himself would have been dead. So remember guns don't kill people, people kill people. And you can't always believe the media for they hide the  positive and flaunt the evil in the world, but don't get me wrong the media is very important to the world but they just need to focus more on the truth instead of viewer ranks. 
Anna Dignam 

Friday, April 5, 2013

Congress May Be Late

       According to this article, Congress may have been too late to make a move on gun control. Since all of the recent shootings interest in gun laws have dropped. The article continues to say that when Congress does introduce a new gun law, they will not have as much support as they did when the shootings first happened. Some Congress men have started to make a movement on restraining guns in their states, but are worried that people will protest them. The Sandy Hook Elementary shooting that killed 20 children and 6 adults has sparked this new idea to control guns in the United States.
     
In the photo to the right is Gabby Giffords, former Representative of Arizona, who was shot in the head at a rally. Giffords made a miraculous recovery and she has since resigned as Representative but is involved the gun control debate.
-Kennedy






http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/27/politics/gun-control-polls
http://www.ryot.org/gabby-giffords-makes-impassioned-plea-on-gun-control/64734
3/31/13 - This morning on NBC's Meet The Press the roundtable 
-Kennedy

Friday, March 22, 2013

In Maryland, seven year old Josh Welch was suspended for two days for nibbling a pastry treat (Pop Tart) into a shape of a gun. He was accused of waving the pastry "gun" in the other children's faces. The day he Josh was suspended, Park Elementry sent home letters stating what had happened, saying he was making "inappropriate gestures disrupting the class". The parents and the attorney are arguing that the child was just using his imagination, they are also apply for an appeal. The Anne Arundel County recieved the appeal, they were not able to comment on it, but they what they were able to mention was that they review the appeal and then meet we the parents and discuss on what can be done. The attorney, Robin Ficker, says that the school over exagerated the matter at hand. Ficker also mentioned that some puzzels also look like guns such as Idaho, Oklahoma, and Florida. There were no reports that the other children in the class felt threaten. This was the fourth case Ficker had to handle that involved a child being suspended for being accused for making a referance to a weapon when the weapon did not exist. People now a days do over exaggerate athe severity of guns. As where they are dangerous its the person who is in possession of it, is the one who makes it dangerous.
-April

Kennnedy: Common Sense

            According to this article from CNN, lawmakers are figuring out how to make more controlled gun laws that are more common sense to people. All of this was brought about from the massacre of Newton Connecticut where 20 children and 6 adults were all shot. I agree with this article because making a common sense law will help less informed people understand. Another point in this article is that no high powered guns will be sold, only used in the military. I agree with this point because the average person does not need to have a high powered gun in their possession.
            "There is no question that if this becomes law, it will keep guns out of the hands of people who should not have them. It will reduce violent crime. It will save lives. We know that's true, because in states that already require background checks on private sales, the rate of women murdered by an intimate partner armed with a gun is 38% lower than in states that don't have such background checks." -Bloomberg 
               If people actually take the time to educate themselves about guns and understand they are dangerous and should only be used in times of great danger, then we would not have to be telling people how to control their guns. 



















http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/ny-biden-bloomberg/index.html

April Martinez: It just won't work

      There are a few major reasons in which why stricter gun control laws just simply will not work. The first reason being because if the government did try to buy back all of the citizens guns to cut down on how many guns are actually owned and out in the public, that is over 300 million guns and many people are not willing to give back their guns because they see it as a violation of the Second Amendment. And another reason is because it is thought that cutting down on gun and using stricter laws will dramatically cut down on crimes, which is not necessarily true.

     "'The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.' 'The Second Amendment guarantees the people a way to defend themselves. In past times, arming the population was a safeguard against possible government tyranny and dictatorship.
Today, many citizens still see their right to bear arms as an important means of self-defense; they also fear that gun control would be the first step towards the people’s rights being removed little by little. You can’t carry your guns around in public, you can’t own these specific guns, your guns need to be under lock and key at all times. Soon you can’t have any guns at all–time to amend the Constitution. You give an inch and the government could take a mile." 
    "Mass shooters don’t follow the law. Studies show that most criminals come by their guns illegally, often by theft or underground purchases. This allows them to completely bypass stringent background checks and other regulations. For example, Connecticut has one of the nation’s most strict gun laws. Gun owners must be 21 or older, apply for a local permit, be fingerprinted for a background check, wait for a 14-day period, and take a gun safety course.
But that didn’t stop Adam Lanza from simply stealing guns and killing 20 children and six adults at the Newtown shooting. Additional gun regulations would not have done anything to prevent the tragedy. Additional gun laws would also be difficult to enforce. Even Vice President Joe Biden admitted that the administration lacks the time to enforce existing gun laws on background checks, saying to an NRA representative, 'We simply don’t have the time or manpower to prosecute everybody who lies on a form, that checks a wrong box, that answers a question inaccurately.'”

"The Clause." The Clause. Annie Z. Yu, 01 Feb. 2013. Web. 22 Mar. 2013.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Brianna Nunez
Many say that guns are the main reason for all the violence in the United States. But in reality it is not the gun's fault it is the person in control of it that make the violence in the United States or any where else. Just like all the school shootings the security guards did not have fire arms to protect everyone inside. With the security having a weapon to protect the children inside the school there would not be as many school shootings or maybe there would not be as many deaths related to gun violence. If there is a bad guy with a gun there should be a good guy with one to stop any violence from happening. On the other hand everyone should have some kind of fire arm to protect themselves from any harm they may feel from others. If the government took away our right to have fire arms in our possession they are going against the Second Amendment which would be unconstitutional. The only way that the government can know that the fire arms are going in the right hands if they do many test to see the persons mental stability in handling the weapon. With these test they can make sure that there will not be anything that will send the person off the edge and make them harm an innocent person. In the end, guns and other fire arms are here to protect us and not harm us, but put in the wrong hands they can do a lot of damage.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

In this article from the Business Insider, it states several reasons why the public should not accept gun control policies and laws.

http://www.businessinsider.com/reasons-conservatives-oppose-gun-control-2013-1 

      One of the points this article makes about control is that, not only is owning a gun protected by 
the Constitution but also reflects the spirit of the Revolution. Meaning that when it took place the 
Founding Fathers were scared that tyranny would reassertion itself in our country so they created a 
democracy and framed it as a constitutional republic bound by limits. They created the Second 
Amendment to help ensure that people had means of their own physical defense. People can protect themselves from any type of horror or terror that they encounter because as humans we have the right to protect ourself, our families, and our property. But one of the main points that the government seems to be leaning on about their reasons for gun control is that if they were to increase gun control that gun crimes and fatalities would decrease tremendously, but what they need to realize is that it is not true. What does need to be done about the people that buy guns is to have them undergo a full background check and even a psychological test because the main reason people are shooting others, in either schools or on the streets is because they are not mentally stable. The government should not allow people who have potential physiological disorders to purchase weapons. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. 
-April

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Gun control is any law, policy, practice or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens among others. That said if gun control was established in America then it will go against the second amendment which is the right to bare arms. We as humans need the ability to protect our selfs from the government and others. If the gun control laws are passed then the government would have complete control over us. It would be the closets to dictatorship america can get. Politicians tell you we should band weapons But never give a valid reason why. Yes they say gun violence is up but the major shooting that happen in America are done by mentally unstable human beings. For example the shooting at Connecticut school, the shooter Adam Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a disorder linked to autism whose sufferers struggle with social interaction.Adam Lanza caused so much concern because of his social awkwardness at high school that he was assigned a psychologist, according to a former school official. There are many more examples that support this. Politicians also say that by applying gun restriction laws that gun violence will drop drastically. Well Chicago is a prime example for why that statement is not true. Chicago has the most strict laws on guns, yet they have the highest death by gun rate in America! The reason to this is that criminals know that they can get their way, for there is no worries of a citizen carrying a concealed handgun. So this blog will focus on the news of gun control and keep up on the latest stories.
-Anna