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Guns in Churches, Psychiatric Evaluations, and Other State Laws Proposed Since Newtown
In the month since the Newtown massacre, there has been an onslaught of state legislation related to guns—both to broaden, and restrict, owners’ rights. With Vice President Joe Biden scheduled to present his gun-violence task force’s recommendations on Tuesday, and New York state reportedly poised to vote on comprehensive gun legislation, here’s a roundup of ten measures being pushed around the country. South Carolina Less than a week after Sandy Hook, a Republican delegate introduced legislation that would allow school employees with concealed-weapons permits to bring their guns to work. Each employee seeking to bring his or her weapon onto school grounds would need approval from the school board and could not have a history of violence. But even in the state’s Republican-controlled legislature, such a bill is far from a sure bet. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, a representative tried to pass a similar bill that would have allowed concealed carry on public school grounds, but the bill died on the House floor. New Jersey Members of the New Jersey Legislature introduced 18 bills related to gun control at the start of the 2013 session. One of the more controversial ones: a bill that would require people seeking a gun permit to undergo a psychological evaluation. Under the proposal introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Angelica Jimenez, prospective gun owners would submit to the same kind of evaluation performed on police officers. Her bill would also call for police officers to inspect prospective gun owners’ homes to determine if the weapon would be properly kept away from children and the mentally ill. If it passes, the law would rank among the strictest in the country.IllinoisAfter the Illinois General Assembly failed to act on gun control during its recent lame-duck session, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel took matters into his own hands. The former White House chief of staff is drafting a Chicago-only gun ordinance that he hopes will push state legislators to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, according to the Chicago-Sun Times. It is unclear exactly what his ordinance will entail, but the mayor’s team expects—and is ready—for whatever Emanuel passes to be challenged in court. READ MORE >>
In Georgia, a Blueprint for Battling Obamacare
Sharon Cooper is not a national political figure. She is a state legislator in Georgia, one I happened to encounter at a recent event in Atlanta. But Cooper is also an archetype of Obamacare's newest adversary: the state official fighting health care reform on the ground. These officials can't stop the new law from taking effect. The Supreme Court and the presidential election settled that. But they can interfere with its implementation, potentially denying insurance to millions of poor people across the South and the interior West. To accomplish that, they're wielding some specious arguments.The most critical issue in these places is whether to expand Medicaid, the insurance program for the poor. The federal government provides most of the funding, but states manage the program and have leeway over who can enroll. At the moment, most states limit Medicaid to specific groups of low-income Americans, such as single women with children. Under Obamacare, states are supposed to expand eligibility so that the program includes all low-income Americans. But states don't have to undertake that expansion and lawmakers like Cooper, a Tea Party Republican from the north Atlanta suburbs, are working hard to see that they don't. Because Cooper presides over the Health and Human Services Committee in the state House of Representatives, her opposition makes a difference.Georgians have a lot at stake in this fight. According to projections from the Kaiser Family Foundation, about half a million additional people would become eligible for Medicaid if Georgia opts for the expansion. And if Georgia doesn't? Then most of those half-million people will have no insurance at all. The fate of these people was very much on the agenda at the meeting where I saw Cooper—the "Health Care Unscrambled" policy breakfast, sponsored by a group called Georgians for a Healthy Future. The group believes in health care reform, as did the majority of people at the event. It was to Cooper's credit, I think, that she agreed to appear and explain her views. (I was also speaking there.) But one of her arguments caught my attention, because in more than a decade of covering health policy I'd never heard it before. READ MORE >>
Obama's Sainthood Won't Raise The Debt Limit
“A prince, so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal, ought not to mind the reproach of cruelty; because with a few examples he will be more merciful than those who, through too much mercy, allow disorders to arise, from which follow murders or robberies; for these are wont to injure the whole people…” --N. Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter XVII, “Concerning Cruelty and Clemency, and Whether It Is Better To Be Loved Than Feared.”President Obama seems to think that you win by demonstrating that you’re a more reasonable person than your opponents. It didn’t work too badly, I’ll grant, as an electoral strategy in the 2012 election. But when governing it is generally preferable to demonstrate that you’re willing to be an even bigger son-of-a-bitch than your opponents are. This wisdom has been widely disseminated for at least 500 years (see above), but it seems to elude the White House. Maybe we should blame the unwholesome influence of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, but for whatever reason this president often seems more interested in getting into heaven than in getting his way. READ MORE >>
The Democrats' 2016 Contenders Are Betting on Gun Control
Post-Newtown, our "national conversation" on guns has taken two strikingly divergent paths. On the one hand, much of the punditry and Washington political establishment is already lapsing into the resigned assumption that yet again, nothing much will come of our initial outrage over the horror of children being cut down by big guns with big clips, even before Joe Biden announces the administration's gun-control proposal this week. The gun lobby is just too strong, and the popular resistance to major new firearms restrictions just too ingrained, for reform to happen. At the same time, though, several high-profile Democrats who've been mentioned as 2016 presidential contenders are betting on a different read of the situation. As they see it, Newtown has truly changed things, making it not just politically feasible to broach new constraints, but perhaps even politically imperative.Last week, there was New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, tapping some of his father's moral fervor in a rip-roaring call to make his state a pioneer in gun control: "No one hunts with an assault rifle. End the madness now." He has since reached a deal with state legislators to further restrict assault weapons in the state, limit magazine clips to seven rounds and toughen background checks. Not to be outdone, Cuomo's potential 2016 primary foe, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who made his name running against gun violence in Baltimore, let slip that he, too, will be announcing a major package of new regulations, including the nation's strictest gun-licensing requirements and a ban on assault weapons. And don't forget Colorado's John Hickenlooper, another Democratic prospect who, in the more hostile political terrain of the West, is now calling for instituting background checks on all gun sales, including private person-to-person ones.What are we to make of this? Are we back to the Democratic Party circa 1984, with candidates trying to outflank each other to the left to win the affections of the liberal base, with ominous consequences for the eventual general election? Wasn't that what happened to the Democrats in 2000, when Bill Bradley, an ardent gun control proponent, helped drag Al Gore to the left on the issue during the primaries, which helped lead to Gore's loss in Tennessee, Arkansas and West Virginia, any one of which would have put him over the top in the Electoral College? READ MORE >>
Eric Schmidt: Silicon Valley's Only Grownup Wants to Have Fun Too
How soul-crushing it must be to be constantly referred to as the “adult in the room” when you are, in fact, always in a room full of actual adults. Though ostensibly a compliment, it’s not entirely flattering. It is the equivalent, more or less, of being the guy you can count on to turn on the lights and turn down the music just when the party is getting fun. READ MORE >>
