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C-SPAN Uses Periscope and Facebook Live To Broadcast The House Sit-In (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via The Washington Post: C-SPAN has made history for resorting to Periscope to live stream a sit-in on the House floor. C-SPAN spokesman Howard Mortman said: "This is the first time we've ever shown video from the House floor picked up by a Periscope account." C-SPAN had to rely on Periscope for a direct feed to House proceedings because these proceedings aren't exactly official. The Washington Post reports: "Earlier today, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) led a sit-in on the House floor to push for action on gun control, following the failure of four gun measures earlier this week in the Senate. According to an official at the House Recording Studio, the cameras that C-SPAN commonly uses to broadcast House business are 'in recess subject to the call of the chair.' No approved video feed, no problem: C-SPAN has been piping in the Periscope feed from Rep. Scott Peters, a California Democrat." The feed hasn't been as reliable as C-SPAN's official House-proceedings feed. "Well, the Periscope video froze up again," said a C-SPAN anchor. And a bit later: "We're still having some issues with that video feed." At around 3:30 p.m., C-SPAN switched to a Facebook feed where viewers could hear and watch Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) rip the "cowards who run this chamber" for failing to turn on the microphones.
I want to write a lot of interesting and thought-provoking things here, but I'm just stuck on that one thing in the title.
Secret. Government. Proceedings.
Really, guys? Tell me again how your country is a free and democratic nation.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Democrats voted AGAINST two common-sense gun control laws two days ago, and are now throwing a fit because they can't get gun control passed.
Yeah, that reminds me of the story about the kid who killed his parents and then begged for mercy because he was an orphan.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Not watered down. At least not if you're in favor of due process. If you're in favor of the government making a no-fly list; able to put anybody on it at their discretion, keep this list hidden, not allow citizens to review their case; and remove liberties from individuals based on being on said list then you're in favor of tyranny.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Nothing is proceeding. A minority faction of the minority party (Democrats) decided they didn't like the compromise bill, so they shut down the House entirely.
The bipartisan bill that the speaker planned to take to vote would prevent the ~10,00 citizens** and 90,000 foreigners on the terrorism "no-fly"* list from buying firearms without approval, and allow them to appeal the denial in court.
Rather than accomplish SOMETHING that's maybe somewhat reasonable, these 60 or so Democrats decided to shut down Congress until they get their way and ban scary looking guns.
* The "no-fly" list doesn't stop people from flying. It means they can't fly into or out of the country.
** The US has about 300 million citizens, meaning that on in 30,000 is on the list.
I have to say, denying someone from purchasing a gun based on a secret list seems 'kinda... you know... wrong?
And also, why is always democrats trying to do an end-run around the democratic process?
We don't see Trump supporters blocking highway ramps and flipping police cars when a vote doesn't go the way they want. Why do the democrats think that's appropriate?
Riot in the streets when the government does something bad, yes. White cop shoots an unarmed black kid... go for it! But protest and riot when a candidate gets a lot of votes? WTF?
Why is it always Democrats pulling this shit?
Staging a sit in, acting like children, because they can't punish people without due process. These are the elected officials that run our country.
What a time to be alive.
The founders of this nation explicitly wrote in their other writings that the militia was every able-bodied adult male who was not a conscientious objector (at that time, this exception generally applied to a very small number of Christian ministers). They also explicitly intended that those American militia men (remember the basic definition - most adult men) would have world-class combat weapons. The American long rifles of the day were superior to the arms of the average soldier of the then-best-in-the-world British army.
Out founders allowed private citizens to own field artillery pieces and naval cannons in addition to as many hand guns, long guns, knives, swords, etc (and unlimited ammunition and explosives) as they wanted. Their presumption was that every citizen had the rights to ANY weapons of ANY type and in ANY quanity.
Gun control advocates have long argued against handguns, claiming they are not for hunting and only good for killing people, as though they are something our founders never intended us to have, but most of our founders had handguns and George Washington explicitly wrote that all American men should own both a rifle and a pistol.
The whole hunting argument is totally dishonest; out founders never intended the 2nd Amendment for hunting and you never find them arguing that it is for that purpose - it's like arguing that they intended the free speech rights only for communication between parents and children (a right everybody assumed every person has and which did not need to be listed because no government opposed it). They very explicitly in MANY places outside the Constitution itself explained what they intended. They never wanted a tyrant to arise in America who would do as so many royals in Europe had done for centuries - used soldiers against their own populations. Therefore, they did not want the US to have a permanent "standing army" which a leader could either use against his own population or on foreign adventures. They intended the nation's men to be so well armed that no foreign force would ever be able to invade and conquer. (incidentally, they DID create a permanent navy and marine corps, and would probably have created a permanent air force had there been militarily-useful aircraft at the time). They also expected that someday, no matter how much the Constitution tried to prevent it, the US government could become tyrannical and they explicitly said the people had the right to violently overthrow it, just as they themselves had thrown-off their former monarch.
The 2nd Amendment gun right is the ONLY reason the government observes any of the rest of the document; fear of an uprising. THAT is why advocates of massive government are always calling for gun control and use every argument for it. The simple fact is that the left-wing argument that the citizens should not be able to have weapons like the ones the military uses is absolutely inverted - THE POSSESSION OF FRONTLINE WEAPONS IS PRECISELY WHAT THE FOUNDERS INTENDED, AND EXPLICITLY SO TO POPULATION COULD OVERTHOW THE GOVERNMENT!!!!!
Serious Americans who have read what our founders wrote KNOW this. Idiots who just want a massive government that will take care of them at the expense of others, and which they can call upon to force their neighbors to do things, know that there is a limit to government power and scope as long as bureaucrats are too scared to push people too much for fear of an armed public - so they want "gun control"
Gun control is absolutely and fundamentally un-American.
Either the government will fear the people, or the people will fear the government. If you want to live in a land where the government has all the guns, you are free to move to any of a multitude of countries. I want to live free in the one country whose government was founded by culturally protestant Christians who explicitly said the population has God-given rights, among which are the rights of free speech, and religion, and property rights and the right to not be abused by malicious governm
Using the no-fly list to keep bad guys from guns is a terrible idea, here is why:
None of the shooters in any of the mass shootings were on the no-fly list.
It's just a bad idea that can and will be abused to keep law abiding citizens from possessing guns, which the federal government has no legal power to do.
If you actually want to solve the mass shooting problem, and not just use fear to remove freedoms from individuals with thunderous applause, this is what I propose:
Let guns be in schools. As part of P.E. or even on its own, students will be in a firearm safety course. They will be target practicing. They will be tearing their guns down. They will be cleaning their firearms. They will be using hand guns, and rifles, and shotguns, etc. They will be taught that they are tools just like the circular saw or the welder in shop class, or knives and scissors in art class and home economics. They will take this class every year they are old enough to hold a weapon safely.
Just like at 16, when they are given a license to operate a tool that "kills" on average 3,287 people per day, at 18 they will take a test and if passed they will get a concealed carry license issued by their state of residence. The CCL will be valid in every state and territory of this nation. All of our children will be taught to not fear guns, and if they so chose they will be armed. That way the next time someone decides to bring a semi auto rifle to a night club to kill innocent people, that person would potentially be staring down a hundred barrels of trained good guys.
There will be no fear for the government to use to tighten gun control. People will not fear guns and will know how to use them. There will not be a gun control problem. Who knows, if everyone is armed, perhaps people may be more respectful to each other.
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Hippie Logger Jock
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That's what happens when you double-down on incoherent and illogical leftist arguments.
You wrote: "That's because there was not a large regular militia or large standing army. The duty of the militia was to essentially be draftees as necessary." which is problematic for two reasons: [1] they in fact DID form the Continental Army for purposes of fighting the British BEFORE the constitution and without displacing the militias, and [2] very few governments in history have had a problem raising an army without having armed militias... in fact most leaders in history would have been terrified of armed militias for fear that these militias would overthrow them, or resist them when they came to draft people into their armies.
You wrote: " This is completely opposite to the wing nut notion that the right to bear arms is necessary so that the government can be overthrown." which as pointed out in an earlier post was the actual design of the founders....so apparently from your view the founders were "wing nuts". I'll take the "wing nuts" over your ilk any day.
You wrote "Today we have a standing professional army. The need for reserve militias no longer remains." which is VERY INTERESTING, given that you left-wingers are always insisting that the 2nd Amendment only applies to the militia, which you claim are no longer needed (so *poof* you have just admitted that you lefties do not support a critical element of the Bill of Rights at all). Also interesting because it means you declare the Nation Guards to be no longer necessary...
You wrote "Red Dawn not withstanding," ha, ha, and Star Trek not withstanding, there is no perfect benevolent Starfleet to swoop in and protect people while not interfering with them and their rights. The actual history of the human race shows that tyranny is the norm for human beings and the current tiny two century window of liberty in only a few places is a rare and fragile thing. Try paying a little more attention to history and a little less to bad pulp entertainment (or worse-than-bad in the case of the moronic "Red Dawn" original or remake)
You wrote: "in the event of an invasion there will be enough people who have passed background checks who own guns to bolster the regular militia..." This matters not if there are archives with lists of all the people who are packing, and worse if the lists include where they are and what they have.
You continued with: "...because no on in government is calling for a complete and total ban on private gun ownership." Actually this is a blatant lie. MANY national democrats have called for the disarming of the American people. Many of them, like DiFi (Senator from CA) use a particular gimmick: on some occasions that call for a ban on all handguns arguing that these guns are only for killing people and have no legitimate use, while promising to never go after rifles. Then in front of other audiences they say they only want to eliminate "assault weapons",which they sometimes admit is any semi-auto rifle. In front of other audiences they argue against even shotguns. The only guns these freaks actually support are the guns in the hands of their armed security details and the hands of the government when it want to take thing from people, or round people up, or force people to do things.
The bigger problem with your bizarro left-wing interpretation of the 2nd is that it cannot be reconciled with what our founders wrote. They wanted the people armed so they could resist the future rise of tyranny.... but no militia controlled by that very government (as the National Guard is) cannot possibly fulfill that role because it would be opposing itself. The National Guard cannot possibly be the "militia" of the 2nd ammedment, it's a logical/biological absurdity.
Which lefty argument are you selling?
[a] The 2nd Amendment is referring to the legit and Constitutionally-important Militia, which is the modern National Guard rather than to individuals, but which you wri