Harry Reid announced via twitter just now that he will vote FOR Diane Feinstein's assault weapons ban amendment. And in his statement he echos arguments made here and elsewhere about, get this, "imaginary tyranny":
I will vote for assault weapons ban because maintaining law and order and saving lives is more important than preventing imagined tyranny.
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
More below
A couple of things:
1. It's great that Reid is taking what seems to be a risky stand and publicly stating he supports the MOST controversial gun safety measure - but is perhaps his support much ado about nothing if he thinks it has no chance of passing, and it is conveniently too little, too late?
2. It looks like Dems are going to take head on the nuttiest of the gun lobby rhetoric, which I think is the right strategy - go right at it and publicly expose it for what it is, crazy talk
Another bit of news - the NRA has taken a page out of the Daily Kos gun club's (RKBA) book and used an obviously biased "poll" of law enforcement:
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Here's RKBA's diary from a few days ago on the this same "poll":
http://www.dailykos.com/...
... which might as well be an NRA press release on the "poll", and in fact is quite similar:
http://www.nraila.org/...
8:02 AM PT: From Reid's Senate floor speech on the AWB:
"These conspiracy theories are dangerous and they should be put to rest.
In the real world, in addition to mowing down first-graders, assault weapons are used to shoot down the very people who are sworn to protect us.
Here’s just one real-world example. After serving nine months in Afghanistan with his National Guard unit, Staff Sgt. Ian Michael Deutch was eager to return to his day job as a police officer with the Nye County, Nevada sheriff’s office. He couldn’t wait to get back to work.
He had survived Afghanistan. He had survived bombs and bullets.
On his second day back on the job, he was shot and killed by a man with an assault weapon with a 30-round clip. Sgt. Deutch was responding to a domestic dispute at a Pahrump, Nevada casino when he was shot three times in the chest. One of the bullets pierced his body armor. He was airlifted to Las Vegas, and rushed into emergency surgery. But he died later that night. He was 27 years old.
All 730 soldiers in Michael’s squadron returned alive from their tour of duty in Afghanistan. It was a criminal on the streets of the United States of America, armed with a weapon designed to kill who took Michael’s young life. This is what his mother said: “He was finally safe. In our country. And somebody here kills him.”
That’s a tragedy. And it’s one we could have prevented by keeping weapons of war off the streets."
http://www.dailykos.com/...