Discover Top Posts Tagged with #kira lerner

In Chicago, juvenile electronic monitoring now comes with a new form of potential surveillance.

Even if children are alerted when they receive a call, attorneys said issues of consent remain. In 2014, Illinois passed a wiretapping law that made it illegal to use an “eavesdropping device” to overhear or record a conversation without the consent of all parties involved.

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” said Greg Gaither, founder of the Illinois African-American Juvenile Justice Institute and the Woodlawn Juvenile Reentry Project in Chicago, calling electronic monitoring an expansion of surveillance that is already concentrated in particular criminalized communities. “The reach of the electronic monitoring has gotten to the point where it goes too deep into communities.”

#vslinks #citylab #city lab #kira lerner #chicago #criminal justice #ankle monitors

Gun safety Update This Week!

ThinkProgress: 5 Indefensible Tweets From The NRA Since The Oregon Gun Massacre.

After a mass shooting, the NRA traditionally goes silent for a period of time. In the case of the gun massacre in Oregon, the NRA stopped tweeting on Thursday, October 1 at 1:44 p.m., shortly after the news broke. The account resumed tweeting at 12:07 p.m. on Friday, October 2 with an innocuous tweet about gun safety. By Monday, the NRA twitter account was aggressively tweeting out information intended to head off any efforts to increase gun control in the wake of the massacre at Umpqua Community College. Much of this information, however, was wildly misleading or just plain inaccurate. Here are five of the NRA’s most egregious recent tweets: 1. There is no gun show loophole. There is no so-called "gun show loophole" http://bit.ly/1LghikX #2A #gunfacts There is a gun show loophole. At gun shows, unlicensed sellers can sell guns without any background check, waiting period, or paperwork. These are referred to as “private sales.” There are thousands of gun shows in the United States each year. These unregulated “private sales” of guns also take place on the internet or other physical locations. The NRA disingenuously claims that these additional loopholes mean that there isn’t a specific gun show loophole. 2. The Australian gun buyback didn’t work.

Australia’s 1996 Gun Confiscation Didn’t Work – And it Wouldn’t Work in America http://bit.ly/1Leiwgx #2A #gunsense

After a gun massacre in Australia in 1996, the government “instituted a temporary gun buyback program that took some 650,000 assault weapons (about one-sixth of the national stock) out of public circulation.” At the same time, the government banned semi-automatic rifles and tightened licensing requirements. A 2011 Harvard University study concluded that the buyback program was “incredibly successful in terms of lives saved.” There have been no gun massacres — defined as the killing of four or more people at once — in the 17 years since the buyback took place. There were 13 gun massacres in the 18 years prior to the program. Additionally, the number of firearm suicides and homicides was reduced dramatically. This reduction was directly tied to the buyback program. The Harvard study found that “the drop in firearm deaths was largest among the type of firearms most affected by the buyback” and “firearm deaths in states with higher buyback rates per capita fell proportionately more than in states with lower buyback rates.” The article cited by the NRA does not dispute the reduction in firearm deaths after the buyback program but simply asserts, without much analysis, that the drop was a coincidence. It relies almost exclusively on a deeply flawed study produced by the Australian gun lobby. 3. Gun free zones are magnets for murderers.

#ICYMI: Why gun-free zones are magnets for murderers http://bit.ly/1j2LYLS #2A #gunfacts

86 percent of mass shootings occur outside of gun-free zones. Studies have found no evidence that people purposely choose gun-free zones for mass shootings. Rather, there is usually another clear motive for the choice of location. In most school shootings, for example, “the killers had personal ties to the school they struck.” 4. Over the last 5 years, twice as many people were killed with someone’s bare hands than with a rifle.

#Fact #2A #gunrights

This is misleading to the point of parody. The statistic comes from this chart from the FBI that looks at murder victims from 2010 to 2014. The data found no more than 769 homicides each year with a “personal weapon” — a category that includes hands, feet and any other part of the body. Meanwhile, there were over 8000 homicides by firearms each year. The NRA isolates the category “rifles” to make guns seem relatively safe — there are around 250-350 homicides with rifles each year — but this just reflects the popularity of handguns over rifles. Additionally, there are between 1600-1900 firearm homicides each year where the type of firearm could not be identified by the FBI. So the NRA’s claim, in addition to being highly misleading, also might not be true. 5. Fewer than 1 percent of criminals get guns at gun shows.

Where do criminals get guns? #knowthefacts #2A #SecondAmendment

This statistic vastly understates the nexis between gun shows and criminal activity by focusing only on the proximate source of the gun. The same study found that “sixty-nine percent of criminals surveyed reported acquiring guns from a friend, family member, or street seller.” And where did those people acquire their guns? In many cases, at a gun show. Overall, “3 out of 10 guns that criminals use in crimes changed hands at a gun show somewhere in their chain of custody.” Gunman Opens Fire At Northern Arizona University, Killing One And Wounding Three Others.

There was a fatal shooting early Friday morning at the Flagstaff campus of Northern Arizona University. The school, which enrolls 20,000 students, released details of the incident on Facebook:

Northern Arizona University

Yesterday at 6:19am ·

Four people were shot at the Northern Arizona University campus in Flagstaff, AZ, early Friday. According to the Northern Arizona University Police Department, the four victims included one dead, and three wounded. The shooter is in custody. Campus is not lockdown.

The three victims are being treated at Flagstaff Medical Center.

The incident took place outside Mountain View Hall on the northeast end of the Flagstaff Campus. The first call of shots fired came in at 1:20 a.m.

NAUPD is working on the investigation with the Flagstaff Police Department at the scene. More details will be released as they are forthcoming.

Further information about the shooting will be released at a press conference scheduled for 6 a.m. local time. It is the 47th school shooting this year, according to data compiled by Everytown For Gun Safety. It is the third school shooting since the massacre at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last week.

How Indiana Is Tackling Mass Shootings Without Gun Control.

Yet another gun massacre has rocked an American learning institution, the 45th school shooting to take place this year. And on both sides of the political spectrum, the responses have been as predictable as the shooting itself — the left argues for gun control; the right argues for more guns. It is perhaps the most fiercely divisive issue in American politics. Since 20 children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, there have been 142 school shootings — at least 33 of which involved fatalities, according to Everytown For Gun Safety. Still, on the issue of gun control, the political lines have been firmly drawn. Nothing has been done, and there has been no indication that anything will be done. There is no middle ground. If Sandy Hook … had what Indiana is promoting in their schools, nobody would have died. But as the debate rages on, some are wondering whether anything can be done in the meantime to protect schools from active shooters. One group thinks there is, and that it’s playing out in Indiana. Already, they note, at least one school there is carrying out a program that works to mitigate school shootings without promoting more guns or gun control. They say ten more Indiana schools are slated to have this program in place by next year. And the proposed solution could be implemented on a federal level. “I know it sounds politically crass,” said Mason Wooldridge, the co-founder of Our Kids Deserve It, a group that works to promote what many might consider aggressive school safety standards. “But if Sandy Hook Elementary or the college in Oregon had what Indiana is promoting in their schools, nobody would have died.” No Ordinary Safety Standards The safety standards Wooldridge is working to implement in Indiana schools are no ordinary measures. They’ve already been implemented at Southwestern High School, a small school in rural Shelbyville. There, not only do children perform “active shooter drills” alongside fire drills, teachers wear special key fobs that alert police faster than a 911 call. Classrooms have “hardened doors” that lock automatically and “hardened exterior glass” windows to deflect both bullets and brute force. Cameras in the school have “shooter detection technology” — tools created for the military — to help law enforcement more quickly locate suspects. And if the suspect is trapped in the hallway, smoke cannisters can be detonated to slow down the shooter. Wooldridge thinks these measures could have prevented the deadly outcomes of shootings like Sandy Hook and last week’s incident at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. “The reason he was able to carry out the killing was because he was able to walk up to the door and walk right in,” he said, referring to Sandy Hook. “With this system, a sensor on the glass would have said someone is trying to break in, and that would have gone to the administrative area and the local police department. So he would have been by himself, stuck in a hallway. In Oregon, the same thing would have taken place.” The reason he was able to carry out the killing was because he was able to walk up to the door and walk right in. In addition, Wooldridge says the doors at Southwestern High School lock automatically — a concern for fires, but a safety measure so teachers don’t have to remember to lock the door behind them. Wooldridge said this would prevent situations like the one during Sandy Hook, when a teacher told a 911 dispatcher that she had to go outside to lock her door while the shooter was active in the hallway. The measures are expensive, costing anywhere from $400,000 to $600,000 for a 35-classroom school, Wooldridge said. But he insists the costs would amount to “a McDonald’s meal once a month” for taxpayers, and that school or law enforcement budgets would not be allowed to be cut to make the upgrades. In addition, Southwestern’s particular upgrade was funded by a donation from a security company and government grant. Grants will also fund the 10 additional schools to receive the technology next year, he said. Schools Without Security Are ‘Essentially On Their Own’ There is something a bit unnerving about installing high-tech security upgrades on elementary school campuses. But in 2013, the FBI explicitly said that schools must “play a key role” in mitigating the outcome of active shooter situations — if only because of how quickly the events unfold. According to one study, the median time for shootings is about three minutes, the vast majority stopped within nine minutes. At the same time, police take on average three minutes to arrive on scene, and another several minutes to locate and stop the shooter. “This means that for at least the first several minutes of an attack, the potential victims are essentially on their own,” the study added. For at least the first several minutes of an attack, the potential victims are essentially on their own. The conservative solution to this is that schools must put more guns directly inside the school. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre famously said following the Sandy Hook massacre, before calling on Congress to put armed police officers in every American school. But there are potential pitfalls to that, Wooldridge notes. For one, law enforcement has no way to know who is the “good guy” and the “bad guy,” and the need to act quickly can result in deadly confusion. And there has been little discussion of liability if a non-law-enforcement officer accidentally shoots a child, or if a child accidentally gets hold of the “good guy’s” gun. In addition, law enforcement budgets would have likely have to be increased to pay for increased capacity of police officers patrolling schools. That increased cost would be recurring — personnel costs would never go away, so long as officers remained in school. By contrast, a government investment in a security system would eventually be paid off. Do High-Tech Security Systems Really Solve The Problem? In the months following Sandy Hook, President Obama signed numerous executive orders to develop model emergency response plans for schools and provide $30 million in grants for schools to develop their own plans, among other things. But there has been no effort to create a nationwide standard for public learning institutions when it comes to active shooter response. “Nationally, there’s nothing being done to create standards of safety,” Wooldridge said. “But in Indiana, they are doing all those things.” It’s likely that the idea would receive pushback from conservative groups, which generally advocate a state or local approach. In comments to the conservative Daily Signal, for example, the Heritage Foundation’s education fellow Lindsey Burke said initiatives like Indiana’s shouldn’t be handled by the federal government. There are commonsense ways to make our schools safer while we make these laws. If national standards aren’t acquired, however, it will be up to school districts themselves to decide whether to invest in these measures — and with the high costs, it’s likely that they would be implemented mostly in predominantly-white suburban schools. Indeed, the small Southwestern High School is 97 percent white, and the median income level is above the state’s average. And in a way, aggressive school safety measures only reinforce the notion that school shootings are, as Donald Trump said, inevitable. With that point, for now, Wooldridge agreed. But not entirely. “He’s right that no time soon can we stop these events from happening, but he was false because they are able to be mitigated, and they are able to be stopped once started,” he said. “The gun debate will always be there. Let’s continue it, but in the meantime, there are real actionable steps we can take to make sure these events are mitigated in the future. There are commonsense ways to make our schools safer while we make these laws.” Hillary Clinton Unveils Aggressive Gun Control Plan.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton announced her aggressive plan to tackle gun violence on Monday, saying she would enact universal background checks and close the gun show and internet sales loophole that currently allow criminals to purchase firearms. In the wake of last week’s mass shooting in Oregon — the 294th so far this year — Clinton said on the Today Show that she would take administrative actions if Congress fails to pass legislation. After the Sandy Hook massacre in 2013, gun control groups and families of the victims pushed aggressively for Congress to expand background checks, but the legislation ultimately failed in the Senate. “I’m determined to do something about it and I’ll try in every way I can to get those guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them,” she said in a New Hampshire town hall televised the Today Show. According to her campaign’s policy briefing, Clinton “knows that gun ownership is part of the fabric of many law-abiding communities,” including many in New Hampshire where she presented her plan. But her proposals focus on violent criminals, the mentally ill and domestic abusers and what can be done to prevent the roughly 30,000 gun deaths the United States sees every year. Under her plan, Clinton will advocate for comprehensive federal background check legislation, but if that fails, she has vowed to take administrative action to tighten the gun show and internet sales loophole. Her plan also calls for repealing a law which prevents victims of gun violence from suing gun manufacturers and pushing for legislation to prevent domestic abusers from buying guns. Clinton’s proposals put her in stark contrast to her Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who is currently leading in some New Hampshire polls but who has faced scrutiny for his past support of a number of pro-gun positions. Sanders voted against the Brady Bill, legislation signed by President Bill Clinton that instituted federal background checks and a five-day waiting period for gun purchases, and has voted for other pro-gun legislation to appeal to voters in his gun-loving, rural state. Sanders told ThinkProgress in New Hampshire that his background would help him reach across the aisle to break the current gridlock in Washington, D.C. “Coming from a state where guns are mostly used for hunting, I’m someone who can bring people together for commonsense gun control legislation,” he said. “You know, there are some who want no gun control at all, and some who want to take away every gun in America. We can scream and yell at each other, but I don’t think that’s going to solve the problem.” Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who is also challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination, pressed his rivals on Sunday to support a series of gun control measures that he has endorsed. O’Malley has called for reinstating the expired federal ban on assault weapons, a measure that Clinton’s plan does not address. Clinton’s plan will likely be met from strong opposition by the National Rifle Association (NRA). At the group’s annual meeting in April, Republican presidential candidates and NRA leaders led attacks on Clinton and vowed to elect a Republican candidate who will fight for Americans’ Second Amendment rights. NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre warned of the “permanent darkness of deceit and despair” that will come if Clinton is elected. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump recently released his plan to uphold the Second Amendment — a plan that is indistinguishable from the NRA’s agenda. Clinton has spoken out about the NRA and vowed to fight back against the group in the past. In a CNN town hall last year, she said: “We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” Clinton discusses her proposal on the Today Show: Trump’s Fix For Mass Shootings Is A Recipe For More Daily Gun Violence. Donald Trump thinks the solution to America’s gun problem is vigilante community college professors. Speaking in Tennessee on Saturday, Trump offered this assessment of the recent mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. “It was a gun-free zone,” Trump inaccurately told the audience. “I will tell you — if you had a couple of the teachers or somebody with guns in that room, you would have been a hell of a lot better off.” Umpqua Community College is not a gun-free zone. A 2011 court decision forbade public colleges in Oregon from banning guns on campus. Indeed, a student who was on campus at the time of the shooting says that he was carrying a concealed weapon when the shooting began, although he told MSNBC that he chose not to confront the shooter because he feared that police might not be able to distinguish him from a bad guy with a gun. This risk of confusion, it should be noted, cuts another way as well. In 2012, New York police confronted a man believed to have just murdered a co-worker near the Empire State Building. During the ensuing gunfight, nine bystanders were shot — all nine of whom were struck by bullets fired by the officers. These were trained law enforcement officials — professionals who are likely to be much surer shots than a college professor with a gun — and yet in the confusion of a gunfight, even they were unable to avoid striking innocents. Trump’s idea that the solution to gun violence is more guns is hardly a new one — after a 2013 shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre complained that “the problem is there weren’t enough good guys with guns” — though there is little empirical support for this position. A study by the Violence Policy Center found that for every justifiable homicide where a firearm is used against a felon in the process of committing a crime, there are 32 criminal homicides committed with a gun. Another reason why more guns are likely to lead to more criminal homicides is that the overwhelming majority of these homicides do not occur in the kind of premeditated mass-shooting scenario where a “good guy with a gun” might be able to bring a killing spree to an end sooner. According to one study, “[n]early half of all homicides, committed by men or women, were preceded by some sort of argument or fight, such as a conflict over money or property, anger over one partner cheating on another, severe punishment of a child or abuse of a partner, retaliation for an earlier dispute, or a drunken fight over an insult or other affront.” The most common model for a gun homicide, in other words, is an argument or confrontation that escalated to a shooting match because one of the participants happened to have a gun. Laws allowing greater access to guns will only increase the likelihood that these conflicts become homicides. Perhaps that explains why there is such a close correlation between strict gun laws and fewer gun-related deaths. Indeed, according to a 2013 report by the Center for American Progress, “the 10 states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high — 104 percent higher — than the 10 states with the strongest gun laws.”

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Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC: Presidential candidates must take a stand Gun violence is an epidemic in our country, and the American people deserve to know what actions the next President of the United States will take to make our communities safer. Earlier today, Hillary Clinton released her comprehensive plan for reducing gun violence in the United States, and Americans for Responsible Solutions' applauds her for laying out exactly what she'll do if elected president. Commonsense steps like closing loopholes that allow dangerous people to buy guns, keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers, and cracking down on the illegal gun trade will save lives while respecting the rights of responsible gun owners. But now we need to know where every candidate stands -- and if you make your voice heard, I am certain that we will. Add your name: Call on every candidate for President of the United States to release a detailed gun violence prevention plan. So far, in two Republican presidential debates, there was only one question asked about our gun laws and only a handful of candidates got the opportunity to answer. Next week, Democrats gather for their first debate and we are all hopeful that the issue will come up during the conversation. Every single day, people are dying because their elected leaders refuse to take action on bipartisan ideas that enjoy the support of 90% of Americans and a majority of gun owners. We deserve to know how our next president will work to address this issue.

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Everytown for Gun Safety: We can act without Congress I'm tired of waiting for Congress to act on gun violence -- and I bet you are too. That's why Everytown for Gun Safety just sent President Obama five straightforward actions the White House can take to help curb gun violence, save lives, and reduce crime without waiting on Congress. We know President Obama is open to these ideas, but to overcome the NRA's aggressive opposition, we need to send an overwhelming message that we want real action NOW. Automatically sign the petition to President Obama to tell him you support him in taking executive action to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people. Ask President Obama to Act Now! Automatically add your name to the petition. Yesterday, Everytown sent a list of five executive actions that the President should take to clarify existing rules and more strictly enforce the law [1]: •Guns Near Schools: Remove exemptions that let dangerous people carry guns near our children's schools •Crackdown on No-Check Gun Sellers: Make sure high-volume gun sellers become licensed dealers and are required to conduct background checks for all gun sales •Intercept Potential Killers: Ensure that federal law enforcement notifies local law enforcement when dangerous criminals try to illegally buy guns at dealers in their community •Enforce Existing Law: Help states that require background checks for all gun sales to enforce existing laws on the books •Close the Boyfriend Loophole: Don't let convicted domestic abusers buy guns just because they’re not married to the person they abused Each of these common-sense measures can help reduce gun violence -- and NONE of them requires going through Congress. Make them a reality by automatically adding your name to the petition to the White House right now: http://act.everytown.org/sign/obama-take-action If enough of us come together, we can convince President Obama and the White House to drown out the gun lobby's scare tactics and recognize that Americans are hungry for change. Thanks for taking this important action,

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Washington Post: Obama weighs expanding background checks through executive authority.

In response to the latest mass shooting during his presidency, President Obama is seriously considering circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers who purchase weapons from high-volume gun dealers.

Under the proposed rule change, dealers who exceed a certain number of sales each year would be required to obtain a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and perform background checks on potential buyers.

As the president heads to Roseburg, Ore., on Friday to comfort the survivors and families of those killed in last week’s mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, the political calculus around his most vexing domestic policy issue is shifting once again.

After the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., claimed the lives of 20 students and six staff members, Obama asked Vice President Biden to devise a list of policy proposals in response, and on Jan. 26, 2013, the president announced 23 executive actions ranging from restarting federal research into the causes of gun violence to providing parity for mental health coverage under private insurance plans. He pushed for legislation mandating universal background checks on gun sales, an effort that failed in the Senate in April 2013. In August that year, Obama closed two gun-sale loopholes through executive authority, subjecting gun purchases by corporations and trusts to background checks and banning almost all re-imports of military surplus firearms to private entities.

[Guns, race remain Obama’s biggest missed opportunities]

In the wake of last week’s tragedy, Obama said he had asked his team “to scrub what kinds of authorities do we have to enforce the laws that we have in place more effectively to keep guns out of the hands of criminals.”

“We are hopeful we can find a way to do this,” said one senior administration official, who noted that lawyers were still working through details to ensure that the rule could pass legal muster. “It’s a lot more clear today than it was a year ago how to work this out.”

Nine days before a shooter opened fire on the Umpqua Community College campus, former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly, were at the White House to reiterate a long-standing request that those private dealers who sell a sizable number of guns conduct background checks on buyers. The proposed rule change would clarify what it means to be “engaged in the business” of selling firearms.

In a meeting with Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Giffords and Kelly, who became gun-control activists after Giffords was seriously wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, were pushing for a regulatory change that administration officials considered — but then shelved — nearly two years ago.

The proposed executive action aims to impose background checks on individuals who buy from dealers who sell a significant number of guns each year. The current federal statute dictates that those who are “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms need to obtain a federal license — and, therefore, conduct background checks — but exempts anyone “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”

White House officials drafted the proposal in late 2013 to apply to those dealers who sell at least 50 guns annually, after Congress had rejected legislation that would have expanded background checks more broadly to private sellers. While the White House Office of Legal Counsel and then-Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. initially concluded the regulation was legally defensible, according to several individuals involved in the discussions, some federal lawyers remained concerned that setting an arbitrary numerical threshold could leave the rule vulnerable to a challenge.

ATF officials, moreover, objected that it would be hard to enforce and that it was unclear how many sellers would be affected by the change. “Everyone realized it would be hugely politically controversial,” said one individual, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private discussions.

Rodham Clinton listed the idea of changing the definition of who qualifies as a gun dealer as one of her top proposals to address gun violence.

[Can Hillary Clinton’s background checks proposal actually work?]

The aides to Biden who worked most intently on the background-checks proposal in 2013 have since left the administration, but it has resurfaced periodically: Obama discussed the idea with Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch during a July 9 Oval Office meeting, aides said, three weeks after nine African American parishioners were gunned down in Charleston, S.C. Now, according to administration officials, a group of West Wing staffers are working in concert on this and other possible executive actions.

Pia Carusone, a senior adviser at Americans for Responsible Solutions, the group Giffords and Kelly founded, declined to discuss details surrounding private White House meetings.

“Over the last few years, Gabby, Mark and ARS staff have met with various administration officials to discuss how we can work together to address America’s gun violence problem,” Carusone said by e-mail. “Many potential solutions have been discussed in conversations that have included the president, vice president and their teams.”

Arkadi Gerney, senior vice president at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, said tightening the definition of who is “engaged in the business” of selling guns “is a meaningful but modest step towards the goal of ensuring that all gun sales involve a background check.”

National Rifle Association spokeswoman Jennifer Baker, by contrast, said any change was unnecessary and could “ensnare” people not intended to be covered by the law, such as a widow selling off her late husband’s gun collection. “People who repeatedly sell large volumes of firearms are already covered in the current statute because they are already defined as ‘engaged in the business,’ ” she said.

Some activists, including those from the faith and community organizing group Metro Industrial Areas Foundation say Obama could be much bolder with his executive authority. On Thursday, the group, which is pushing the president to leverage the federal government’s purchasing power with gun manufacturers, held a rally in Lafayette Square to demand Obama call in industry leaders and insist that they develop safer technology and crack down on the stores that sell a disproportionate number of guns used in crimes.

“We have traveled here from across the nation to challenge you to stop whining about the power you don’t have, and start acting with the power you do have,” said Bishop Douglas Miles, who is on the group’s leadership team and serves as pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Baltimore.

Last week, Obama said that “this is something we should politicize” and that every American had “to for a while, be a single-issue voter” when it came to tightening the nation’s gun laws.

Gun-control activists have made significant political headway on the state level since the Newtown shooting. In the past year, they prevailed on background check fights in Washington state and Oregon; laws to carry concealed weapons without a permit were enacted in three states but defeated in 15. According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 55 percent of gun laws enacted so far this year loosened restrictions rather than tightened them, and many were quite minor. In 2012, by contrast, 72 percent of all enacted gun laws loosened restrictions.

“The gun lobby has done a very good job of tying up Washington, D.C.,” said John Feinblatt, president of the advocacy group Everytown. “It can’t tie up the people, and cannot, in fact, tie up state legislatures.”

While polling shows between 85 and 92 percent of Americans support expanding background checks, the broader issue of gun rights remains fraught. In Roseburg, where many have chafed at the administration’s gun policies, opinion remains sharply divided over whether Obama should even come to offer his condolences to victims’ families.

“Half the people in Roseburg say it’s wonderful, the other half say he shouldn’t show up,” said Earl Skonberg, a local gun owner who engages in sport shooting.

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Gov. Howard Dean: Here’s how we can stop the NRA

It's been almost a week since nine people lost their lives in Oregon in yet another school shooting, adding to a tragic list of students and children killed in school shootings across America. While it's hard to believe, there have actually been 142 school shootings in America since the Sandy Hook massacre.

Add to that total other mass shootings, like the Arizona tragedy that seriously wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, or the mass shooting at an Aurora movie theater in 2012.

This has to stop. Of course, the big question is: How? As a lot of organizers like to say, what's the "theory of change"?

Right now, Congress is in the hands of Republicans who are loyal to the extremist leaders of the National Rifle Association. But the truth is that they are dramatically out of touch with public opinion.

A Pew poll from July 2015 showed 88% of Americans support background checks, and 57% support an assault weapons ban. That's true even in red states -- just last week a poll found that 80% of South Carolinians support universal background checks. Even 74% of NRA members support universal background checks.

That gives us an opportunity to overcome their opposition and change laws across the country -- if we are willing to put in the work of organizing the American people to act.

It's time to push through common sense gun violence prevention legislation at every level -- and replace the candidates who are standing as roadblocks with those willing to take action. Will you help? Chip in $3 or more today to support DFA's national strategy to stop the NRA.

In the days since the shooting at Umpqua Community College, DFA members have already started pushing back against the NRA and changing the politics on guns:

Nearly 50,000 of you signed Gov. Howard Dean's petition supporting President Obama's agenda to stop gun violence

In all 50 states, DFA members have called their members of Congress to demand action on guns

DFA members have joined with our partners at Everytown for Gun Safety to urge President Obama to take immediate executive action on five intersecting fronts

If we're going to continue that momentum, we also need to do what DFA does best: win elections and send progressive champions to office. The only thing that scares a Republican politician more than the NRA is the prospect of losing re-election.

Whether it's a race for state legislature or the U.S. Senate, electing progressive candidates who are willing to fight on our values -- including supporting effective laws to reduce gun violence -- is a crucial part of producing change.

We know the NRA leaders and their Republican allies are out of touch with America. With your help, we can support candidates across the country who will stand with us against the NRA. You could call it a 50 State Strategy to stop the NRA.

It won't be easy. But if we want effective laws against gun violence, we need to organize in cities and states across America. Will you chip in $3 or more today to help DFA build the movement to stop the NRA -- and stop mass shootings?

We'll be sharing next steps with you soon -- where and when we'll escalate, what candidates to help, and more.

Thank you for joining with us to stand up to the NRA, now and in the months to come.

- Howard

Gov. Howard Dean, Founder

Democracy for America

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Colin Goddard: I am a school shooting victim - Take Executive Action on Gun Violence.

In 2007, I was a student at Virginia Tech when a gunman burst into my French class. I was shot four times and incredibly lucky to survive. In total, 32 people were killed on campus that day and over a dozen more were injured. Seeing the news of nine students killed by a gunman at Umpqua Community College in Oregon last week was incredibly hard for me. I know the terror that those students felt. I know the long and difficult road that lies ahead of them. And I'm fed up with our leaders in Congress who have watched these horrible events unfold and yet have done nothing to address the problem. After the Virginia Tech massacre, I wanted to change that. I joined with Everytown for Gun Safety to utilize my experience to educate Congress and the public about the problems in U.S. gun laws. The events in Roseburg have only strengthened my resolve. Now I'm joining Everytown to call on President Obama to take executive action in the wake of the shooting at Umpqua Community College -- the 18th mass shooting of 2015. Everytown is asking President Obama to take five critical and simple steps on gun violence that would keep dangerous people with guns out of our schools; crack down on gun trafficking and curb the sale of guns without background checks; ensure that law enforcement identifies and prosecutes the most dangerous criminals who try to illegally obtain guns; help states to enforce their own background check laws; and ensure that all convicted domestic abusers are prohibited from possessing guns. Please sign our petition asking President Obama to take action now.

LETTER TO

President Barack Obama

" data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 16px; max-height: none; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; word-wrap: break-word;">In the wake of the horrific shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon — the 18th mass shooting of 20151 — you spoke to the nation, lamenting that gun violence has grown so routine in America and deploring Congressional inaction. You also issued a powerful call to action, and recommitted your administration explore its authority to take executive action and enforce the laws already in place. Everytown for Gun Safety has identified there five life-saving measures that your administration could advance — today — to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people.These five critical — and simple — steps would: keep dangerous people with guns out of our schools; crack down on gun trafficking and curb the sale of guns without background checks; ensure that law enforcement identifies and prosecutes the most dangerous criminals who try to illegally obtain guns; help states to enforce their own background check laws; and ensure that all convicted domestic abusers are prohibited from possessing guns. Please take these five steps as soon as possible.

" data-tolerance="20" data-view-attached="true" data-view="components/ellipsis" style="box-sizing: border-box; max-height: none; overflow: hidden; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; word-wrap: break-word;">Click Here To Sign!

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Credo Action: We need more than "thoughts and prayers," we need a vote on gun control Tell Republican congressional leadership: "It’s time to put your constituents before the NRA. Bring real gun control legislation to the floor of the House and the Senate."

Add your name:

Each time there’s a mass shooting, many pro-NRA members of Congress offer their “thoughts and prayers” to the friends and families of the victim. They respond to the tragedy while it’s in the news but never make any sincere effort to enact systemic reform. Americans are ready for a change. They are ready to implement commonsense gun control regulations that save lives.1 Unfortunately, the Republican politicians who control Congress are only ready for business as usual. They are so beholden to the National Rifle Association that they block any reforms from even coming up for debate, much less a vote. It’s time for Congress to consider a meaningful package of gun control reforms, including an assault weapons ban and universal background checks, but breaking the NRA’s chokehold on Congress will require massive amounts of grassroots pressure. Politicians are accustomed to getting away with giving the NRA their votes while offering the families of the victims of gun violence nothing more than tweets about “thoughts and prayers.” These politicians will have to feel enormous pressure from hundreds of thousands of people demanding a change if we’re going to beat the NRA. Demand Republican Congressional leaders respond to gun violence with action, not just "thoughts and prayers," and bring real gun control legislation to the floor for a vote. Click here to sign the petition. There are range of gun control reforms that would make a real difference in reducing gun violence and making Americans safer — requiring universal background checks including closing the gun show loophole, banning assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and ending legal protections currently given to gun makers. The NRA and its backers in Congress know that a real conversation about gun violence in America would lead to real change. It’s why they go to such extreme lengths to stop that conversation from happening. Now is the time to pressure Republican leaders in Congress to follow-up their thoughts and prayers with legislative action. Tell Republican leaders in Congress: It’s time to vote on gun control legislation now. Click here to sign the petition. Instead of taking action to protect Americans from gun violence, the only action Congressional Republican leadership has taken is to protect their friends in the NRA. In 2004, Congress let the ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines sunset. In 2005, Congress passed a law that gave gun makers and gun dealers a powerful protection that most other industries don’t have — immunity from liability for crimes committed with their weapons. For nearly 20 years, NRA lobbyists have worked with pro-NRA politicians to ban the Centers for Disease Control from funding research on gun violence. The NRA’s lobbying has also banned the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from releasing crime-gun trace data to researchers and academics, keeping them away from valuable data that could help us understand and prevent gun violence.2 We've had enough of a Congress beholden to the NRA. Demand that Republicans who run Congress bring a real gun control package to the floor for a vote. Click the link below to sign the petition: https://act.credoaction.com/sign/NRA_Vote?t=7&akid=15824.6785281.MPxi0m Thanks for helping to break the NRA’s chokehold on Congress. CREDO Action from Working Assets

Add your name:

References:

“A New Way to Tackle Gun Deaths,” Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, 10/3/2015.

“In First Post-Charleston Gun Vote, Congress Preserves CDC Research Ban,” Jennifer Mascia, The Trace, 06/24/2015.

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Shannon Watts, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America: The next President of the United States: The summer started with nine people gunned down in a South Carolina church. The fall started with nine more shot and killed in an Oregon classroom. We won't take it anymore. If this continues, more than 128,000 people will be shot and killed during the next President's term. So with two Republican debates come and gone -- and the first Democratic debate just days away -- candidates need to hear from us NOW. We're sending a message to anyone who wants to be President: We demand a plan to address our country's gun violence crisis. Send a message to the candidates and DEMAND they release a plan to end gun violence in America. Your message will be sent to each campaign's headquarters.

For the first time in decades, candidates are making this issue a priority and releasing plans to fight gun violence. But ALL of them need to address this crisis -- and so far, only a few have taken a stand. There are common-sense measures that will keep guns out of dangerous hands and save lives. Expanding background checks. Closing deadly loopholes. Keeping guns out of classrooms and off campuses, away from the places our children learn and play. For too long, leaders have failed to take action because they only hear from one side: The NRA and the cowardly politicians in their pocket. Now, supporters like you are forcing candidates to address these solutions head on. Send a message to demand ALL candidates release a plan to fight gun violence. We are parents, survivors and advocates -- and we have the power to decide this election. If our leaders don't take a stand, we'll vote for ones who will.

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Mother Jones: The NRA Is Losing Its Grip on Power It's time to stop thinking of the gun lobby as invincible (This story originally appeared on ProPublica).

No sooner had the toll from the latest mass shooting been tallied than came the world-weary predictions that the carnage would have zero political effect. "Why the Gun Debate Won’t Change After the Oregon Shooting," read the headline at The Fix, the Washington Post's political blog. Without doubt, the gun rights lobby is a formidable force. It is backed by a truly grassroots network of committed and well-organized supporters who are willing to make calls to legislators and turn out in even low-turnout elections to back pro-gun candidates. This "intensity gap" bedevils gun control groups, which, however well some of their proposals poll, have trouble getting voters to agitate and to prioritize the gun issue the way gun rights defenders do. But the invincibility of the gun lobby is being overstated. For one thing, gun ownership is becoming more concentrated in a smaller share of the population, one that is increasingly clustered in certain regions, thus limiting the lobby's political reach. For another thing, the big recent defeat for the gun control movement, the 2013 failure to pass universal background checks for gun purchases, was a close call. Six senators with A-ratings from the NRA voted for the bill; it fell just five short of the filibuster-proof 60. Had it passed the Senate, there would have been great pressure from the Sandy Hook families to bring it up for a vote in the House, and it would have needed only about 20 Republicans to pass. No, the odds of the bill being revived anytime soon are not good, with the Senate now in Republican control. But things are shifting beneath the surface. The two Democrats who voted against the bill and were up for re-election last year both lost, after getting zero backing from the NRA in exchange for their vote; this will make centrist Democrats less likely to vote with the NRA in the future. Meanwhile, two Democratic governors who signed tough gun laws, in Colorado and Connecticut, both won re-election in an otherwise brutal year for their party. A year earlier, Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia, the NRA's home state, while running on an outspokenly anti-NRA platform. As more elected officials take on the NRA and live to tell the tale, the calculus for even self-interested politicians will evolve, especially if gun control supporters start to really challenge those who vote against them. There are three "no" votes on background checks with tough re-election races in swing states next year: Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, and Rob Portman in Ohio. Simply deciding that the gun control issue is a political loser is self-fulfilling, just the sort of fatalism that the NRA counts on to preserve the status quo. People Magazine Just Made an Unprecedented Push for Gun Control Solutions.

People magazine, one of the country's largest publications, with a circulation of more than 3.5 million readers, just threw its weight behind the push for increased gun control by publishing contacts for every member of Congress, and urging their readers to lobby for action.

In an editorial on Wednesday, the magazine's editorial director Jess Cagle explained the unprecedented decision to enter the gun debate after the latest mass shootingat a community college in Oregon.

The early warning signs that could stop the next shooting rampage

As President Obama said, our responses to these incidents—from politicians, from the media, from nearly everyone—have become "routine." We all ask ourselves the same questions: How could it happen again? What are we doing about gun violence in America? There are no easy answers, of course. Some argue for stricter gun laws, others say we should focus on mental health issues, some point to a culture that celebrates violence.

But this much we know: As a country we clearly aren't doing enough, and our elected officials' conversations about solutions usually end in political spin.

In this issue we pay tribute to the nine Oregon victims, as well as 22 other men, women and children who've lost their lives in mass shootings—incidents where a murderer has opened fire on a crowd—in the U.S. during the past 12 months.

The move by People is remarkable considering the magazine

—a staple at every newsstand and doctor's office in America—is traditionally associated with celebrity gossip and

general human interest stories that carry little risk of being offensive or overtly political, meaning its message could reach many more Americans outside the DC echo chamber, in which action on gun violence has completely stalled.

Read People's entire announcement here.

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Gun Safety Weekly Update!

Two weeks ago, the murder of two young journalists in Virginia shocked the conscience of a nation and re-ignited the national debate about the epidemic levels of gun violence in the United States. Their deaths, witnessed by millions on television and online, provided a horrifying demonstration of how quickly and senselessly a gunman can end a promising young life while ushering in a lifetime of pain and loss for the families and colleagues left behind. Rightfully, the collective response from everyone who saw, read about, or heard about the murder was, ENOUGH! It is time for Congress to act without delay. Today, all of us have an opportunity to speak with one voice as part of a National Day of Action on Gun Violence. Hundreds of thousands of Americans from across the country are calling Congress to demand they make our communities safer. Add your voice. Dial 1-877-960-2185 or use our online calling tool to call your Senators and demand action to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the dangerously mentally ill. Our movement will only create the change we desperately need if we make our voices heard. If we stand together, we will win - remain silent, and the status quo is sure to prevail. Thank you for choosing action. You answered Andy Parker's call to do whatever it takes to end gun violence in America. His speech on Capitol Hill yesterday inspired me and moved me to tears. I wanted to make sure you got a chance to see it. Watch the moving video of Andy's speech and share it on Facebook or Twitter. WATCH ANDY PARKER'S POWERFUL SPEECH

It was a heartbreaking honor to be with Andy at the Capitol yesterday along with so many others who have been affected by gun violence -- rallying to show Congress we're fed up and ready to do whatever it takes to end gun violence in our country. Together, we made it a national day of action that Congress couldn't ignore. #WhateverItTakes trended nationwide on Twitter, there were more than 50 events coast to coast, survivors of gun violence met with members of Congress, and U.S. senators received thousands of calls from their constituents. We got national news coverage on CNN and MSNBC, including a 40-minute special featuring leaders of the Everytown Survivor Network. It's moments like these that show the real power of this movement. Please watch this inspiring recap of yesterday's rally on Capitol Hill, and share it with your friends and family: http://act.everytown.org/signup/andy-parker-video For the countless Americans who have been killed or injured, for our kids who deserve to grow up free from gun violence, we're in this fight together. And it means so much that you're standing with us. Whatever it takes. Chris Kocher This summer, we've witnessed shootings in America's churches, movie theaters, shopping malls, workplaces and homes. We refuse to accept this horrifying violence as our new normal. That's why we're doing whatever it takes to get laws on the books that will stop the senseless violence. We'll demand that elected officials fix our gun laws at every level. And if our politicians refuse to act, we'll vote them out and elect real leaders who will put our lives and the safety of our children ahead of the NRA. I want to take a moment to thank you for your support, and ask if you'll show your commitment to fighting alongside us -- whatever it takes. Make a gift of $25 or more today, and we'll send you a FREE "Change Gun Laws or Change Congress" magnet as a thank-you gift. WILL YOU DO WHATEVER IT TAKES?

This Thursday, hundreds of moms, survivors, and supporters will rally at the Capitol with Andy Parker, father of slain WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker. We'll rise together and show we're ready to do whatever it takes to protect our children and loved ones from gun violence. State by state, company by company, and election by election -- we know change will come because we're going to make it happen. Your contribution will support:

Mobilizing everyday Americans to email, call, and meet face-to-face with lawmakers and business leaders about common-sense gun laws

Holding elected officials accountable when they put the NRA's interests before our safety

Empowering a network of gun violence survivors to be powerful advocates

Keep this fight going by donating $25 or more today, and we'll send you a FREE magnet: https://act.everytown.org/donate/change-congress-magnet Jeb Bush Admits Background Checks Prevent Gun Violence, But Doesn’t Support Their Expansion.

More than 90 percent of Americans support expanding background checks on gun purchases. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush is one of those supporters — but only when it comes to his own state.

On Tuesday, Bush admitted that gun violence has decreased in Florida since implementing background checks on gun purchases, but said he still wouldn’t advocate for the policy to be expanded nationwide.

“In Florida, where I was governor, we have a requirement of background checks, a 72-hour waiting period,” Bush said in an unaired clip from the inaugural episode of “The Late Show” with Stephen Colbert. “We’re not violating any Second Amendment rights. In fact, Florida would be considered a Second Amendment, pro-gun state. Gun violence is way down. But we have simple checks to make sure that people that aren’t criminals are not accessing guns.”

In response to a viewer question about gun control, Bush went even farther, saying he would advocate for expanding background checks to block mentally ill people from accessing guns. Florida currently lags behind other states when it comes to submitting mental illness records to a federal database used in gun background checks, according to a report by Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

“I think the next step is to figure out ways to make sure that we know if people have mental health issues, which is really the common denominator of a lot of these violent, tragic cases where people aren’t getting access to mental health and we don’t even know if they have real issues,” he said.

For a minute, the former Florida governor almost sounded like he supported expanding background checks to more gun purchases, agreeing with Colbert that the National Rifle Association’s opposition to mental health checks can be defeated.

But then he continued, proving how little he understands about preventing gun violence in the United States.

“Why would you want to impose national gun laws on top of every circumstance of this country?” he asked. When Colbert pointed out that the Second Amendment is applied nationally, so gun control should also be a national issue, Bush disagreed, saying that Florida is different from New York or Vermont.

“The Bill of Rights has a Tenth Amendment, which is that powers are given to the states to create policy, and the federal government is not the end-all and be-all,” he said.

Watch the “Jeb! Bonus! Clip!”:

Studies show that effective background check laws reduce gun violence. States that require background checks for all handgun sales have lower levels of gun violence compared with states that do not require background checks, according to a Center for American Progress report. Those states have 46 percent fewer women shot and killed by their intimate partners, 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers shot and killed with handguns, and 48 percent fewer gun suicides committed.

The ten states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high as the ten states with the strongest gun laws, according to the report.

Thank you again for your support. You make this movement possible.

Yolanda Pierce

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Think Progress: Bernie Sanders To Introduce Legislation Abolishing Private Prisons When Congress Reconvenes

Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Tuesday that he will introduce legislation to abolish private prisons, one piece of his comprehensive racial justice reform package that has won praise from Black Lives Matter activists.

“When Congress reconvenes in September, I will be introducing legislation which takes corporations out of profiteering from running jails,” the independent senator said at a campaign rally in Nevada.

Sanders released his racial justice platform last week after Black Lives Matter activists repeatedly disrupted his speeches in Seattle and Phoenix, demanding that he address racial inequalities in policing and in the criminal justice system. The platform he announced in response addresses both police violence against African Americans in the United States and the problems associated with mass incarceration.

Black Americans are imprisoned at six times the rate of whites, Sanders notes on his campaign website, and if the trend continues, one in four black males born today can expect to spend time in prison. One of the methods Sanders proposes to address mass incarceration is eliminating the private prison industry.

“It is morally repugnant and a national tragedy that we have privatized prisons all over America,” his website says. “In my view, corporations should not be allowed to make a profit by building more jails and keeping more Americans behind bars.”

Private prison companies have been the target of countless lawsuits over their rampant corruption, mistreatment of inmates, and inhumane conditions which have even led to the death of prisoners. Because the corporations are profit-driven, they have an incentive to cut corners on the care of their inmates and detainees to save money.

Currently, 16 percent of federal prisoners are housed in private prisons. The two largest prison corporations, GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, together take in $3.3 billion in annual revenue and the industry doubled in size between 2000 and 2010.

While several states including New York and Illinois have banned private prisons, it’s a tough battlefor lawmakers to take up because of the massive amount of money the corporations pour into politics.

Activists groups have long criticized the growing political influence of the private prison industry — the National Institute on Money in Politics found that GEO contributed $6,051,178 to Republican, Democratic and third party candidates over the past 13 years. GEO and Corrections Corporation of America together have spent nearly $25 million on lobbying efforts since 1989.

The corporations exert their influence on lawmakers in both statehouses and in the U.S. Capitol, especially those with influence on the immigration debate. A recent report found that private prison corporations spent $11 million over six years to lobby Congress to keep immigrants in detention centers.

On his website, Sanders also notes that “it is immoral to take campaign contributions from the private prison industry or its lobbyists.” Several Republican presidential candidates, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have taken significant contributions from the corporations. Rubio has a history of close ties to GEO and he has received almost $40,000 in campaign donations from the corporation during his career, according to the Washington Post.

Sanders’ announcement that he will introduce a bill to abolish private prisons makes him one of the first presidential candidate to speak out against the corrupt industry. Hillary Clinton has called for an end to mass incarceration, but she also receives significant financial contributions from lobbyists for two major private prison corporations.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who has put forward a comprehensive criminal justice reform package, has also vowed to “phase out” federal for-profit prisons, including closing for-profit immigration detention centers.

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Think Progress: 6 Ways Bernie Sanders Will Challenge Hillary Clinton

CREDIT: AP PHOTO

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is expected to announce today that he is running for the Democratic nominee for president, becoming the first official challenger to Hillary Clinton.

Sanders has said he intends to challenge the wealthy who have gained power in the country. “Are we prepared to take on the enormous economic and political power of the billionaire class, or do we continue to slide into economic and political oligarchy?” he said on his website.

Though he isn’t likely to win the party’s nomination — he currently trails Clinton by 55.1 percentage points in polls — his presence in the campaign field will shift the debate left on a number of issues, from the economy to the environment. Here are a few ways Sanders could shape Clinton’s campaign:

Income Inequality

One of the central components of self-described “socialist” Sanders’ campaign will be addressing the same economic problems that Clinton has recently vowed to prioritize.According to Vermont Public Radio, his message will be that the middle class has been decimated in the past two decades. “This country faces enormous problems,” he said on MSNBC. “Our middle class is disappearing. We have more people living in poverty than almost any time in the history of America.”

To show how far he is willing to go to fight inequality, Sanders held a nine-hour Senator filibuster in 2010 to protest a tax-cut extension for the wealthy. The speech turned into a book and made the senator an icon for liberal economic policy reform.

But when asked in January what he has heard from Clinton on income inequality, Sanders said “not much.”

Trade

Sanders is opposed to all trade deals including the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Obama administration plans to complete by the end of the year. He has called it “disastrous” and that it is “designed to protect the interests of the largest multi-national corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, the environment and the foundations of American democracy.”

Clinton has remained noncommittal when speaking about the TPP, but groups on both sides have been urging her to take a stance. Sanders has also pressured her to state a position, telling CNN that “it’s not a very difficult choice.”

“Are you on the side of working people who would suffer as a result of this disastrous trade agreement, and seeing their jobs go to China or Mexico, or are you on the side of corporate America and pharmaceuticals?” he said in the interview.

Keystone XL

Sanders has said he is one of the leaders in trying to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline and has spoken out about the potentially disastrous environmental effects. Last year, he told CNN that “the idea that we would give a green light for the transportation of 800,000 barrels of some of the dirtiest oils all over the world makes no sense to me.”

While Sanders has been outspoken on the issue, Clinton has not yet detailed her positionon the construction of the pipeline, a move that has been criticized by both liberals and conservatives. The issue is complicated for the former secretary of state, who served in the State Department when the agency was determining what to recommend with regards to the pipeline.

Health Care

Sander stands further to the left than Clinton on health care and has criticized the United States’ lack of a national health system. “In every major country on Earth, health care is a right of all people,” he said during a Senate hearing. He has introduced legislation to provide health care through a Medicare-for-all, single-payer system, and while hesupports the Affordable Care Act, he said in 2010 that it’s “only a modest step forward toward dealing with the dysfunction of the American health-care system.”

Social Security

Sanders has made social security a central issue during his political career. He recently introduced legislation which would expand Social Security — which he calls the “most successful government program in our nation’s history” — by eliminating the cap on the payroll tax on all income above $250,000.

Clinton has criticized Republicans like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for messing with Social Security. “I think there will be some big political arguments about Social Security,” she said during her first trip to New Hampshire. With Sanders entering the field as a candidate who is outspoken about the issue, those conversations may move to the left.

Wall Street

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) insists she does not plan on running for president, so Sanders will likely be the most prominent Democratic challenger to take on Clinton’s ties to Wall Street. Some of Clinton’s longtime supporters work on Wall Street and would pull their contributions if she were to speak out against them.

“I believe we’ve got to break up these giant banks,” Sanders said in an interview. “They’re just too powerful. Where does Hillary Clinton stand on that?”

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Gun Safety Weekly Update!

Mobilizing everyday Americans to email, call, and meet face-to-face with lawmakers and business leaders about common-sense gun laws

Holding elected officials accountable when they put the NRA's interests before our safety

Empowering a network of gun violence survivors to be powerful advocates

But then he continued, proving how little he understands about preventing gun violence in the United States.

“The Bill of Rights has a Tenth Amendment, which is that powers are given to the states to create policy, and the federal government is not the end-all and be-all,” he said.

Watch the “Jeb! Bonus! Clip!”:

The ten states with the weakest gun laws collectively have a level of gun violence that is more than twice as high as the ten states with the strongest gun laws, according to the report.

Thank you again for your support. You make this movement possible.

Yolanda Pierce

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