Gabrielle Giffords Sez “Too Many Children Are Dying”

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On Wednesday, former US Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D–AZ), two years after she was shot in the head and critically wounded in a mass shooting in Arizona, surprised lawmakers when she testified during a US Senate hearing on gun violence in America. Speaking slowly and deliberately, on Wednesday, Giffords told the Senate Judiciary Committee, “Too many children are dying… we must do something. It’ll be hard, but the time is now, you must act. Be bold, be courageous, Americans are counting on you”. This was the committee’s first hearing since last month’s shooting massacre at a Connecticut elementary school left 20 children and 6 adults dead. Giffords and her husband, former cosmonaut Mark Kelly, have become two of the leading advocates in America on the issue of gun safety, forming a group called Americans for Responsible Solutions, which calls for universal background checks for gun buyers and limits on high capacity ammunition magazines. Kelly also testified at the hearing, saying, “We aren’t here as victims, we’re speaking to you here today as Americans. … When dangerous people get dangerous guns, we’re all the more vulnerable.”

Also testifying at Wednesday’s hearing was the head of the powerful American gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA), Wayne LaPierre. He told lawmakers that new proposals to ban assault weapons and increase background checks were not going to solve the problem of gun violence, saying, “Let’s be honest. Background checks will never be universal, because criminals will never submit to them”. LaPierre also called for stricter enforcement of current gun laws, pointing up, “violent felons, gang members and the mentally ill who possess firearms aren’t being prosecuted. That’s unacceptable”.

US President Barack Obama called for new gun control legislation, including banning military-style assault weapons, requiring background checks on all gun purchases, and outlawing ammunition magazines with more than 10 rounds. US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced legislation banning the sale and manufacture of more than 150 types of semiautomatic weapons, as well as limiting ammunition magazines to ten rounds.

 30 January 2013

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20130130/179130099/Too-Many-Children-Are-Dying-Critically-Injured-US-Lawmaker.html

Editor’s Note:

Isn’t that an oddbod argument for the NRA to use? “Let’s not have a law because the criminals won’t follow it”… that’s sheer bonkers and we deserve to laugh it out of court out-of-hand. We need robust gun laws, with especial attention paid to enforcement in the south and southwest, where scofflaws would be most common (that’s where most gun nutters and rightwing kooks are). At the same time, we should preserve the rights of the rural population and registered hunters to appropriate firearms (who ever heard of a mass shooting carried out with a shotgun or hunting rifle?). We can do it… we’ve allowed the rightwing gun nutters to run rampant for too long. Second Amendment be damned… its purpose was to provide for a well-regulated militia to protect the state and society (to keep national defence in the hands of citizen-soldiers, not standing “volunteer” mercenary forces, as is being done today), not provide a rationale for potty nutters to have access to whatever weapons their pointy little heads desired.

BMD

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NY State Passes Toughest American Gun Control Law

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 On Tuesday, the New York State Assembly passed the nation’s strictest gun control law in a lopsided vote, making New York State the first state to enact sweeping gun reform since the Newtown CT elementary school shooting massacre last month. Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters after the New York State Senate passed the legislation Monday night, “It’s comprehensive. It’s sound. It addresses the multifaceted problem that we’re dealing with”. He unveiled the proposal earlier on Monday, after weeks of working behind the scenes to iron out the details, saying, “It protects, I believe, hunters and sportsmen. We’re not looking to demonise gun owners. Gun owners have done nothing wrong”.

The new law, known as the NY Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act, includes a ban on ammunition magazines that hold more than seven rounds, a ban on certain semi-automatic rifles and pistols, and a mandatory background check for all gun sales, including private sales. It provides for real-time tracking of ammunition sales and allows alerts on high volume buyers. It also requires therapists and other mental health professionals to notify state officials when they believe a patient represents a credible threat to harm themselves or others. In such cases law enforcement officers could confiscate any guns owned by the patient. Governor Cuomo noted, “People who have mental health issues shouldn’t have guns. They could hurt themselves; they could hurt other people”.

Not everyone was in favour of the increased gun control measure, or felt it would make New Yorkers any safer. State Assemblyman James Tedisco (R–Glenville), who voted against the legislation argued, “In New York State last year there were 769 murders and homicides. Those committed by the guns you want to ban today, these assault weapons, these killers of people, could have been up to five. And you think you’re going to solve the problem?” The law goes into effect immediately, something Cuomo said was necessary to prevent swarms of people from rushing out to purchase large numbers of weapons before the ban went into effect. US President Barack Obama is expected to announce a national ban on assault weapons and other measures to increase gun control nationwide on Wednesday.

16 November 2013 (MSK)

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/crime/20130116/178801173/NY_State_Passes_Toughest_US_Gun_Law________.html

 

23 December 2012. The Konvertsy Want to Ally Us With THIS…

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On Fox News, Mike Huckabee blamed the Sandy Hook massacre on gays, atheists, and the “abortion pill”. He used the killings to promote his agenda, blaming it on gay people and scientists who promote evolution. Huckabee repeatedly blamed the forces of “secularism” for the massacre, from kids with iPhones to pharmacies that stock “abortion pills”. The konvertsy eat this sort of noxious pabulum up by the gross… and they want to infect the whole Church with it! Look… we have NOTHING in common with the Born-Agains. NOTHING. They have no Christian liturgy… they have no Christian choir of saints… they have no Christian Bible (they only use an expurgated version that leaves out what they don’t want to believe in)… they have no grounding, no apostolicity, no history, and no Creed. How can they be Christian? They aren’t… Our Lord Christ said that there would be those who’d call themselves Christians, but wouldn’t have the substance or ontological reality of Christianity. We have no need to “build bridges” to arrant heresy. The Church can have a salvific monologue with such people, but NEVER a dialogue, for that implies an equality that doesn’t exist. I’ll tell you what… let any Evangelical group trace a CONTINIOUS, UNBROKEN, and CLEAR line to the Apostolic Church, then, I’ll listen… but none have such. They all speak of an offensive and untrue “Falling Away” at the time of St Constantine the Great… they do, they truly do.

The fact that the konvertsy hobnob willingly and gleefully with such evident heretics means that their Orthodoxy is only skin-deep, and that we must put a stop to ordaining former Proddie clergy, as they’re the main carriers of the contagion (do note the distinction… converts who weren’t clergy aren’t as bad… they didn’t undergo a heretical heterodox formation). We are NOT Evangelicals with a “liturgical itch”… NO! We’re Christ’s Church… we’re the Big Tent… we go after ALL souls and have room for everyone… and, most of all, we don’t “testify”. If our lives aren’t a testimony, then, that’s a condemnation of our professions. I’ve noticed that most Born Agains believe in warfare in foreign parts, wanton use of overly-harsh imprisonment and capital punishment, blaming the poor for their predicament, and predatory Free Market buccaneering. I’d say that negates any claim of Christianity on their part.

Any contact with Evangelical groups is inadvisable at best and dangerous at worst. They’re fanatics; they insist on their heresy as truth. They have no Apostolic roots… ergo, they’re not Churches. Josiah Trenham should be defrocked immediately for his intimate schmoozing with Evangelical heretics and his espousing of their lunacies on his radio show (calling it The Arena is blasphemous in the extreme… Mr Trenham isn’t a St Ignaty Brianchininov, not by a long shot). We need to return to the modestly-sane and deliberately-sober policies of Leonty Turkevich and Anastassy Gribanovsky. We don’t need “bridges” to heresy… we do need bridges to Russian Orthodox Unity… do notice that the konvertsy don’t want that. I wonder why…

BMD

20 December 2012. Some Vox Pop from CNET on Westboro Baptist’s Plans to Picket Connecticut Kids’ Funerals… Along with a thought or Two

Don’t you get tired of fundies calling themselves “Christians?” It’s time to take back the title and time to show up these jerks as the charlatans that they are. We should have nothing to do with such non-Christian elements… we should show them what REAL Christianity consists of (and it isn’t either happy-clappy ecstasies or prunish neo-Puritanism)…

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Here are some thoughts from the CNET commboxes on Westboro Baptist’s plans on protesting at the kids’ funerals in Connecticut. Westboro Baptist is why we shouldn’t have ANYTHING to do with “Evangelicals” and their doings. Westboro simply takes sectarianism to its illogical extreme. The megachurches aren’t all that much different. They’re all cut from the same mouldy piece of cloth… they’re all asshats of the first degree.

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Dang! I’m a Christian and I don’t agree with this group of people, Jesus didn’t send to point the finger at others, regardless of their sexuality, religion, or whatever they believe. We were sent to deliver a message, the message of salvation.

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Funny thing… Westboro Baptist Church and their description of “Christian” contradict each other. I personally go to Church and am a Christian, and our response is to at LEAST pray for people who lost their close ones. Adding pain to the wounds is the most un-Christian act when it comes to the loss of a close one, which is what WBC is doing, and it’s truly disgusting. They aren’t Christians.

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To put it in a literal, disgusting nutshell… according to them, their loved ones and babies are dead because God smote them due to the fact that Connecticut now allows gay marriage.

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They absolutely have the right to say it. However, as has been mentioned time and again over the course of the past year, just because you CAN say it, does not mean you SHOULD say it. In addition, they aren’t spreading Christ’s message, because His message was love and tolerance, and theirs is a message of hate and discord. There’s “legal”, and, then, there’s common human decency.

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I’m an elementary teacher and I’ve known about the despicable, unfathomable actions of this group for years. If this happened at my school (God help us), and they showed up… I can only imagine what would go on in our town. They deserve all that they get. I have a theory about their “leader”…sometimes, those who protest homosexuality the loudest are the furthest in the closet. Whatever their reasons, there is NO reason…

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Take note of:

Sometimes, those who protest homosexuality the loudest are the furthest in the closet.

Hmm… wasn’t Paffhausen entangled for YEARS with Podmoshensky, even after Podmoshensky’s defrocking for nasty doings? If shitbirds of a feather flock together (and they do), then, it’d follow that Paffhausen shared Podmoshensky’s tastes… QED. It puts a new light on Fathausen’s caterwauling about homosexuality, doesn’t it? In addition, it makes one wonder why so many former Episkies amongst us are so hot n’ bothered over gays. As the Wikipedia article on Tom Driberg put it (a friendly MP priest put me on to this):

Francis Wheen argues, “There’d been a recognisable male homosexual subculture in the Anglo-Catholic movement since the late nineteenth century”.[136]This theme is explored in a paper by David Hilliard of Flinders University, who maintains that “the [19th century] conflict between Protestantism and Anglo-Catholicism within the Church of England was … regularly depicted by Protestant propagandists as a struggle between masculine and feminine styles of religion”.[137] Driberg throughout his life was a devout Anglo-Catholic; Wheen suggests that Evelyn Waugh, in Brideshead Revisited, may have had Driberg in mind when the novel’s protagonist Charles Ryder is warned on arrival at Oxford to “beware of Anglo-Catholics… they’re all sodomites with unpleasant accents”.[136][138]

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In short, we’ve ordained one too many “High Churchers” as Orthodox priests. The stories that I hear from scandalised real Orthodox are off the wall. The most innocuous innovation is altar girls… not to mention games with the Liturgy… all in the name of “Tradition”. If Paffhausen’s a probable epicene sort, what that tell us about these gents, considering their roots? We’re going to pay a very dear price for ordaining so many of such sorts… very dear, indeed. The ethos of Westboro Baptist isn’t that far away from us… just look at Josiah Trenham, the so-called “Manton Six”, Paffhausen, and Oliver Herbel. Scary ain’t it? We CAN do something of it… but shall we?

Barbara-Marie Drezhlo

Thursday 20 December 2012

Albany NY