Jon Stewart lays it out
Where are our morals? Do we not believe in the sanctity of life? Is one’s interpretation of the 2nd amendment or for that matter the constitution more important than our children’s lives, our loved one’s lives, the lives of people throughout the world?
This week everyone is happy that a bipartisan compromise forged by Senator’s Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), seemed to be at hand for a very weak background check. The mainstream news media called it a breakthrough. Really?
The breakthrough exempts personal transfers between individuals. It means anyone can “gift’” another person a gun. So a thug could “gift” any person capable of buying a gun some cash as they “gift” them a gun in return. This is the power the NRA still has on politicians even though it has been proven that their real political impact on races is negligible.
This legislation does nothing to protect our kids. It does nothing to make a safer America. It simply gives the politicians the optics that they have done something. The NRA came out and said they would be scoring the deal. This is likely a ploy to make the population at large believe that these politicians are making a courageous move, when in reality given the climate where Americans want actions; our politicians are dragging their feet.
Jon Stewart, the comedian/satirist that generally illustrates the buffoonery of our politicians and sometimes our body politic, did a piece that illustrates the extent to which the NRA/Gun Lobby driven politicians would go to protect the ability of their masters to sell guns. The story was really under the radar of the gun debate.
NRA controlled senators and to some extent the Whitehouse were in opposition of all or parts of the United Nation’s Arms Trade Treaty that prevents the transfer of conventional arms across international borders to governments using them for war crimes, genocide and other crimes against humanity. The Senate voted 53 – 46 to approve Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) amendment that would prohibit the U.S. from signing the Arms Trade Treaty.
It is evident this decision is to ensure America’s gun industry unrestricted ability to sell its instruments of death anywhere at anytime. It would do the senators well to remember many times these weapons are used to do Americans harm at home and throughout the world. We should remember we armed the Taliban during its war with Russia. We all know what the Taliban’s next move was.
Jon Stewart in the video above in four minutes encapsulates the idiocy of the gun debate not only as it applies to Americans but as it applies overseas. He illustrates that inasmuch as the treaty does nothing against America’s territorial sovereignty and how it would create its laws governing guns or the second amendment, which those beholding to the NRA simply would not budge. At the end he states the the interesting fact that in the end only North Korea, Syria, and Iran voted against the treaty. Is that the company we want to be in?
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