Readers' Comments

Why does the public have to wait for two years for the information?

No, the NRA won't be happy with EVERY man, woman, and child being forced to carry a gun, just with those who want to and can legally qualify, no felons, no druggies, no mentally disturbed, able to carry. As it stands now, in many places, a man who works late at night, usually carries a large amount of cash on him when he leaves work, and works in an area known for trouble is NOT allowed to even own a gun, let alone carry one. He can hire an armed guard to escort him from his business to his car, or possibly to drive him from his business to his bank, but he himself is not allowed to be armed. In some of these areas, the only way to have an armed guard is to call the police station an hour or so before you are ready to leave, then HOPE they have someone free to escort you to your car. NO protection as you either drive home or to the night depository, and no guards at the bank, either. Yet two thirds of the crooks in this same town have guns and feel no compunction when it comes to using them.

Gohmert didn't say he wished she had a gun on her person. He said he wished she had a gun LOCKED UP IN HER OFFICE.

In the 80's I worked in GEF II. I did not like the fact that the DNR Wardens were allowed to wear their guns in the bldgs. I mentioned it to Risk Mgt. and they stopped. These were "trainees". Guns do not need to be in any public bldgs., including the Capitol. Go out in the woods or to a shooting range. For god's sake people. Wake up, Sandy Hill just happened. Our so-called Governor doesn't give a $hit about guns, he just needs all that NRA money hitting his pockets. Teaches need to be telling Scooter to go jump off one of the tallest KOCH bldgs. he can find. Why the hell should they agree to being armed, he's doesn't give a crap about them. Hopefully Scooter will be in prison soon if his co-criminals have anything to say about it. They're all goin to jail.

At least they lost the presidential election. There has to eventually be some accountability regarding these super pacs. Elections can't be bought. That has to be the message.

This article makes two fatally flawed errors.
1) It assumes that piecemeal, incrmental reforms are worth pursuing. In fact, in a systematically corrupt system like the US, they more often than not do more harm than good.
For example a) the DISCLOSE just makes it easier to coordinate "indpendent" expenditures with campaigns, though it does serve the interests of some NGO's who distribute information about candidate and policy funding that reach very few voters due to the control of the mass media by the same moneyed interests that control government
b) Public funding of elections simply constitutes a susbsidy to the media industry that supports the Democratic Party. There should be no public funding until the broadcast spectrum that Clinton gave away is returned to the People for use in electioneering.

2) It assumes that a Constitutional Amendment is a useful or even possible means to overturn Citizens United. It is not. This a trope of professional activists for raising funds, and in neither needed nor possible and indeed would almost certainly be counterproductive, if adopted. http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/07/09/why-a-constitutional-amendment-isnt-needed-to-overturn-citizens-united/

GUN OWNERS =TERRORISTS IN TRAINING

having more than 30 years of owning handguns, i can only state that they are needed for protection from the criminals, who always have them

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. No more distorting and divisive red and blue state maps. There would no longer be a handful of 'battleground' states where voters and policies are more important than those of the voters in 80% of the states that now are just 'spectators' and ignored after the conventions.

When the bill is enacted by states with a majority of the electoral votes– enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538), all the electoral votes from the enacting states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and DC.

The presidential election system that we have today was not designed, anticipated, or favored by the Founding Fathers but, instead, is the product of decades of evolutionary change precipitated by the emergence of political parties and enactment by 48 states of winner-take-all laws, not mentioned, much less endorsed, in the Constitution.

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for President. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President, including ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote and 48 current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). Support for a national popular vote is strong among Republicans, Democrats, and Independent voters, as well as every demographic group in virtually every state surveyed in recent polls in recent closely divided Battleground states: CO – 68%, FL – 78%, IA 75%, MI – 73%, MO – 70%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM– 76%, NC – 74%, OH – 70%, PA – 78%, VA – 74%, and WI – 71%; in Small states (3 to 5 electoral votes): AK – 70%, DC – 76%, DE – 75%, ID – 77%, ME – 77%, MT – 72%, NE 74%, NH – 69%, NV – 72%, NM – 76%, OK – 81%, RI – 74%, SD – 71%, UT – 70%, VT – 75%, WV – 81%, and WY – 69%; in Southern and Border states: AR – 80%, KY- 80%, MS – 77%, MO – 70%, NC – 74%, OK – 81%, SC – 71%, TN – 83%, VA – 74%, and WV – 81%; and in other states polled: AZ – 67%, CA – 70%, CT – 74%, MA – 73%, MN – 75%, NY – 79%, OR – 76%, and WA – 77%. Americans believe that the candidate who receives the most votes should win.

The bill has passed 31 state legislative chambers in 21 states with 243 electoral votes. The bill has been enacted by 9 jurisdictions with 132 electoral votes - 49% of the 270 necessary to go into effect.

NationalPopularVote
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Read the US Constitution. The states are free to decide how to apportion their delegates to the Electoral College. Don't like it? Amend the Constitution. It's perfectly legal.

I'd like to know if you have ever worked in your sad little life. Maybe you worked at bilking the IRS but, I think that's about the extent of your small existence and that very big sore situated just below your nose. I'll bet you were and or, still are a parasite on you're parents thus never having to do anything for yourself. Sad little man, you probably irk yourself more than you do anyone up here. The best you could do for society is raise your pistol to your parasite noggin and pull the trigger.

I have read on here comments about the correlation of media and violence, video games and violence, and many people who believe life is as black & white as less guns equals less violence using other countries as examples. Well....International comparisons almost invariably compare the United States with some country with stronger gun control laws and lower murder rates. But, if facts really mattered at all you could easily compare the United States to countries with stricter gun control laws and higher murder rates - Brazil and Russia, for example. You could compare the United States with countries with more widespread gun ownership - Switzerland and Israel, for example - and lower murder rates. Stricter gun control laws do not solve the problem, if they did, then why do Brazil and Russia have higher murder rates? Gun ownership is also not a decisive factor in rates of murder, as is apparent with Switzerland and Israel, both countries whose citizens own more guns per person than do Americans. So where does this lead us? It leads us to a line of questioning that could shine new light onto an old problem - that there is something inherent within American culture, social elements that exist and exacerbate this type of behavior. Is it external factors such as socioeconomic class, population density, the weather, or internal factors, such as psychological make-up, cultural values, or personal values? Does it have more to do with mental illness, drug use, psychological or physical abuse? Does parental divorce play a role? Or could it be a combination of all of the above? When you start to ask these types of questions blaming tragedies like this solely on guns not only becomes absurd, but perhaps even a lazy excuse that allows people to not acknowledge the fact that owning a gun is not the problem. So all of you who want to hold to the idea that less guns equals less violence, you are wrong. It is not so black & white. Unfortunately, there is too much politics involved, too much money, and any intelligent academic willing to take the time to research this matter would probably ruin his or her career telling the truth, because the truth almost always runs contradictory to the agenda of power elites.