Posted on 06/20/2015 8:59:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
You can’t have an event like the Charleston shooting take place during election season without all of the candidates being asked to weigh in on gun control. (Once again pretending that any of the currently proposed gun control laws might have prevented that attack.) And since he’s still being discussed as a serious contender for some reason, Bernie Sanders was no exception. But when reporters asked the Vermont Senator to offer his thoughts on gun control, he took a pass.
Bernie Sanders says he wants to talk — at length — about guns.
Just not now.
Two days after a white man walked into a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine people, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate took a cautious approach on gun control Friday when speaking with reporters after an event in Las Vegas.
“I think the people of Vermont understand that guns in Vermont are different than guns in Chicago or guns in Los Angeles,” Sanders said, telling the assembled journalists that he thinks “it is wrong” when people are “in some cases suicidal and in some cases homicidal” are “still being able to purchase guns.”
If Sanders has a weak spot in his armor in terms of pleasing his liberal base, it’s the gun question. Given his many other socialist positions that might come as a surprise, but Sanders’ own voting record on Second Amendment rights is shockingly moderate, or at least it was until quite recently. In 2009 he voted to allow guns in checked baggage on Amtrak trains. Two years before that he voted to prohibit funding for international organizations and agreements that would restrict US citizens’ gun rights. And in 2005 he voted for a ban on nuisance lawsuits against gun manufacturers. He currently has an “F” rating with the NRA, but in years past it has been higher. (Though never a full A rating.)
Of course, his record wasn’t perfect. After Newtown he voted in favor of the ban on 10 round magazines, and back in 1994 he was persuaded to vote for the so called “assault weapons” ban. But still, when questioned in the past he’s come up with some fairly sensible answers.
“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,” he told Seven Days, an independent paper in Vermont.
This mostly reflects the necessity of aligning himself with the folks back home. Vermont still has essentially no gun control laws compared to the rest of the nation. (I think the mountain folk up there still remember having to chase off bears.) And contrary to the granola eating, “hippies in the mountains” reputation of Sanders’ home state, it has some other secrets as well which he may have to deal with while seeking a spot on the national stage. You never hear about any racial unrest in Vermont, it’s true, but that’s probably because it’s the second whitest state in the nation, only missing out on the top spot by two tenths of a percent at 97.7%. (For the record, Maine came in at number one during the last census with 97.9%.) Needless to say, Bernie doesn’t exactly hail from Diversity Central.
Sanders won’t be able to make it through the entire primary without taking a stand on this, so it will be interesting to see how he lines up against Hillary. Clinton, for her part, has been all over the map just as she has on most issues. In 2000, when running for the Senate in New York she was in favor of a national gun registry. In 2008, running against Barack Obama she spoke fondly of her father teaching her to shoot as a little girl and the importance of preserving the Second Amendment. (This led to Barack Obama’s famous “Annie Oakley” comment about Hillary during the primary.) Now that gun grabbing is back in vogue, however, Clinton was quick to jump on the bandwagon again this week.
But back to Sanders… he wants to be taken seriously as a candidate, so the media seems to be willing to oblige him and hit him with all the usual questions. I can’t wait to see how he spins things now. His big credential – if it can be called that – is his reputation for being a damn the torpedoes, lay it all on the line guy who gives you his unpopular opinions whether you want them or not. That works fine in Vermont. Let’s see how well he sticks to that in a national race.
He’s behind a rock and a hard place on that one. Vermont is stuffed full of extreme libs, ready to vote for Bernie Sanders as a Socialist.
But Vermont is also stuffed full of guns. Everybody has one. The hippies are out there shooting along with everyone else. Rats, squirrels, and raccoons, if not turkeys and deer. And Vermont gun laws are the most liberal in the nation.
So what else can Bernie say, except that Vermonters with guns are A-OK. Otherwise, he’d never get re-elected to the Senate. Chicago, maybe not so much.
Wuat? He is, saying people are different? Is he saying that the law, abiding are actually different from criminals when it comes to guns?
Lets change a couple of Bernies words to more reality.
“I think the people of Vermont understand that people in Vermont are different than people in Chicago or people In Los Angeles when it comes to guns.”
That settles it, I'm going to Vermont and taking my guns with me, just to watch them change before my very eyes as we cross the border into Vermont.
Just not now.
Gun Grabber Alert
“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,”
I finally found something I agree with Bernie Sanders about.
Is Sanders giving up his guns?
One Percent of the overall Population of Vermont is Black.
The same goes for the other four designated Minority Groups.
According to Census figures, Vermont is 95% White.
Ten Percent of Prison Inmates in Vermont are Black.
Math is hard.
Nope, sorry jagoff, the Constitution applies equally throughout the country.
My guess, judging from where he grew up, his thinking will be like Mike Bloombergs when it comes to guns. Vermonters won’t be happy with that.
Hillary Clinton talks about ‘gun reform’.
What is there to ‘reform’ about the Constitution of the United States, the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
To ‘reform’ it is to abridge it and that is unacceptable.
Bernie sounds better than Hillary on the Second Amendment at this point, who would have thought that......
““I think the people of Vermont understand that guns in Vermont are different than guns in Chicago or guns in Los Angeles,”
Socialist speak for if elected president, he intends to push for and support gun control.
Sounds remarkably like Ben Carson.
“...I think the people of Vermont understand that guns in Vermont are different than guns in Chicago or guns in Los Angeles...”
A 1911 Colt is the same in both places. Its the hand that carries it and the use that hand puts it to is the difference.
The law abiding in Vermont, Chicago, and Los Angeles equally have the right to own or possess the firearm of their choice whenever and whereever they want. Sorry, Berno.
By Samuel Smith , CP Reporter
November 24, 2014|2:14 pm
Potential Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson reassured potential conservative supporters last week that he opposes any kind of ban on assault weapons and that he would firmly defend the full extent of the Second Amendment if he were to be elected to a political office.
Troubled by the criticism he's received from conservative skeptics over a gun control comment made in a 2013 interview with Fox News' "Glenn Beck," Carson hosted a conference call last week to clarify his stance on gun control before setting off to speak at a fundraising event in Iowa over the weekend.
The 63-year-old conservative's mission in hosting the conference call was to elaborate on a comment he issued while speaking with Beck in February 2013, where he said that he would "rather not have" semi-automatic weapons in the inner cities.
When Beck asked Carson if he believed if people had the right to own semi-automatic weapons, Carson replied: "That depends on where you live. If you live in the midst of a lot of people, and I'm afraid that that semi-automatic weapon is going to fall into the hands of a crazy person, I would rather you not have it. If you live out in the country somewhere by yourself, I have no problem."
As Bloomberg Politics reports, Carson told listeners on last Wednesday's conference call that if he were president or in a position of power, "under no circumstances" would he "allow a bureaucrat to remove any law-abiding citizen's rights for any kind of weapon that they want to protect themselves."
He continued by saying that he would strive to allow citizens the right to bear "automatic and semi-automatic weapons" and he would stand against any bans limiting ownership of assault weapons or handguns. Additionally, he's opposed to any expanded background check requirement for gun ownership.
Carson admitted that he should have clarified his stance while appearing on Beck's program because he felt he didn't "convey" his gun control stance "appropriately."
More in the link
I’m sure Sanders will also clarify his statement at some point later on as well.
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