That’s actually a pretty big step… for a GOP-controlled congress.
That is actually probably the actual biggest win we could reasonably expect to get on the issue (more actually important than feel good bans on bump stocks, or whatever else would be floated), and one that I fully expected to be impossible, given how low profile and inside baseball it is.
It won’t matter at all unless we get back to fact-based governance…but it’s a huge start.
Not sure it’ll do much. Studies have been done without federal money while the federal government was sidelined. Easy enough to just ignore the studies.
I’m pretty sure we already know what results will be released:
- GUNS DON’T KILL PEOPLE. PEOPLE KILL PEOPLE (especially trouble, sick, monstrous, etc, people)
- GOOD GUY WITH GUN >>> BAD GUY WITH GUN
Easy to read exactly what you want into this. Pessimists will assume either nothing will happen or even if it does, it’ll be ignored. Optimists will say that this will usher in a new fact-based approach to gun control.
Who knows, but I will say that once a Democratically controlled Congress approves actual funding for studies, real information that shows that more guns = more gun deaths will at least be something.
Of course there are still lots of people who deny climate science no matter what the research says, so yeah, maybe nothing matters.
True, I was being pretty pessimistic. Glad to see any steps at all. However, when one side of a debate simply ignores facts and data, it’s hard to be optimistic about anything.
The YouTube ban will be the same shit show YouTube dance that they’ve been doing around pretty much everything they get called on the carpet for. They simply clamp down, with no sensible parameters and no real interest in defining any, and a bunch of people and companies that common sense says shouldn’t be effected will be adversely effected. This isn’t about effective moderation of their site, it’s about being able to let the PR guys say “We did something about it”.
As for the CDC thing…that is very big. Back in 1996, the NRA successfully lobbied to get the CDC banned from using government money to research anything that had to do with guns and gun violence. The reason was that, in the years before the ban, the CDC had been amassing research and opinion that was negatively impacting the gun industry. Studies by the CDC clearly showed the (common sense) link between having a gun in a home and the increased likelihood of gun violence or suicide in said home. Researchers were talking about doing to guns what they’d successfully done to cigarettes in the 90’s, basically turning them from status symbol into pariah.
In today’s highly charged gun debate atmosphere, having the CDC start throwing research data into the fray could end up the tipping point in convincing average Americans to demand tougher gun control legislation. It won’t repeal the Second Amendment, but it sure as hell would go a long way towards getting legislation passed for longer waiting periods, closing gun show and private sale loopholes, having a stronger background check process and instituting better gun registration and licensing programs. All things that we need yesterday.
Curious to see how the GOP & NRA will shit all over the Time cover.
I hope you are right. However, I also think that decades of the GOP base being told that scientists are all politicized and corrupt may slow or stop this process. The single-issue 2nd Amendment voters don’t strike me as open-minded or interested in data.
The only way I see this turning around is if equal numbers of pro-gun control 2nd Amendment voters emerge, and they emerge in the right places. That may be happening, thanks largely to the Parkland kids in Florida.
I watch these kids interviewed, particularly Emma Gonzalez and David Hogg, and I see real reason for optimism. They’re natural leaders with terrific on-camera presence, and they are razer-focused on a particular issue. They’re the exact opposite of the vaguely defined, leaderlesss Occupy ‘movement.’
Somebody buy that girl some new pants.
Don’t be heartless. One of the poor girls doesn’t even have shoes. :(
and she is blonde.
Apparently I’m really old now, because the pants and shoes are the first things I noticed too.
Get offa mah lawn, childfolk!
I can see this is going to take some practice.
It’s time for some of you to take the plunge and walk into a clothing store that caters to teens… then you’ll stop blinking twice when you see pants like that.
How the fuck old are y’all? My 41-year-old Gen Xer bff wears pants that are shredded to hell every day
Is he homeless? Because that’s the only reason someone over 40 should be wearing pants with more than a couple of small “designer distress” holes in them.
I think the word you are looking for is fashion. These pants are a thing.
My wife is mid-30s and wears some that have some “designer” tears, and she laments the fact that she can’t find any jeans without holes.
But the ones on the girl on that cover are next level.
She’s been wearing em since she was a metalhead in the 80s, so, I mean, ???