Supreme Court gives and takes away

Guns continue to be a fraught issue and the Supreme Court isn't helping

Machine Guns and Restraining Orders

The Supreme Court is completely unpredictable at this point. Every time I think I’ve got them nailed down they surprise me. Not usually in a good way but they have their moments. Thursday they handed down a ruling that overruled the ATF’s ban on the sale of bump stocks. Then today they backed a ruling that stopped people with domestic restraining orders from owning or purchasing guns.

So…basically…machine guns…cool….abusers…bad. Of course, Clarence Thomas took the side of the guns in both cases. He wrote the majority opinion for the bump stocks and the only dissent on the domestic restraining orders. Because…well, you know why.

In the end we continue to struggle as a nation with the right to bear arms. The battle has shown no sign of ending or even slowing in light of these rulings. At the same time poll after poll shows that Americans overwhelmingly support for reasonable gun violence prevention measures from universal background checks to red flag laws.

No one is trying to take away everyones guns, no matter how much the gun lobby and industry insist that is the goal. We just don’t want lunatics and those bent on violence to have easy access to weapons that can kill dozens in minutes.

With that in mind its hard to understand what the Supreme Court is truly trying to do beyond ruling on the merits of each case without a common strand of philosophy. We need our lawmakers to do something but like abortion, they have all been happy to let the courts lead.

Change in plans

As bad luck would have it my guest this week for the show had to cancel at the very last hour. That doesn’t happen often but sometimes it just does. I realized that I had an amazing conversation with Kris Brown, the president of Brady, on the topic of gun violence just last year before joining the MeidasTouch network. We didn’t have quite the following then so only a couple of hundred of my friends saw it the first time.

What is sad…it’s as timely now as it was then. We can’t keep going like this. As I write this note my phone is blowing up with news that two people were killed and another eight injured in a shooting in a grocery store in Arkansas. This isn’t how we should have to live.

So, I added a new intro, and outro, and this amazing interview with a brilliant leader and advocate.

The Show

Kris Brown

Kris Brown is President of Brady one of the oldest and most respected anti-gun violence organizations in the United States named after legendary White House Press Secretary and gun violence advocates Jim and Sarah Brady. Kris has led Brady since 2016 and is a long time veteran of gun violence prevention work starting her career on Capitol Hill working for Rep. Jim Moran, advocating for the bill that would eventually become the groundbreaking Brady Bill requiring background checks on federally licensed gun sales.

New In The Hot Seat

This Tuesday there will be a Special Election to fill Ken Buck’s old Colorado-04 seat until the end of the term. This is the district that Lauren Boebert has carpet bagged to while fleeing previous hot seat guest, Adam Frisch. Boebert decided not to run in the special but has annointed a Republican who promises to only be a placeholder for her, Greg Lopez. He has a colorful past of his own with an arrest for domestic assault and being forced out of the Small Business Administration.

He is facing Trisha Calvarese who grew up in the district and after leaving for college and a career in government and union organizing, returned to care for ailing parents. Now she is the Democratic nominee and I got a chance to sit down with her this week.