Richard Nixon wished for a total handgun ban
Few presidents in modern times have been as interested in gun control as Richard Nixon, of all people. He proposed ridding the market of Saturday night specials, contemplated banning handguns altogether and refused to pander to gun owners by feigning interest in their weapons.
Several previously unreported Oval Office recordings and White House memos from the Nixon years show a conservative president who at times appeared willing to take on the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun lobby then as now, even as his aides worried about the political ramifications.
"I don't know why any individual should have a right to have a revolver in his house," Nixon said in a taped conversation with aides. "The kids usually kill themselves with it and so forth." He asked why "can't we go after handguns, period?"
Nixon went on: "I know the rifle association will be against it, the gun makers will be against it." But "people should not have handguns." He laced his comments with obscenities, as was typical....
PERRY: We can only save ourselves from kidnappers at the NRA
...No more due process in the clear-cut case of insidious terrorism. When the facts are so clearly before all Americans, for the whole world to see, why bother with this country’s odious and cumbersome system of justice? Send the guilty monsters directly to Guantanamo Bay for all eternity and let them rot in their own mental squalor.
No, no, no. Not the wannabe sick kid who blew up the Boston marathon or the freak that’s mailing ricin-laced letters to the president. I’m talking about the real terrorist threat here in America: the National Rifle Association.
I’m not laughing. What the NRA did last week was no laughing matter....
...By using the weapon of choice for all terrorist organizations, extortion, the NRA has forced the action of about 45 ineffectual U.S. senators, a clear act of terrorism and treason. And Wayne LaPierre and his arrogant cronies are laughing about it....
"Girl’s Death by Gunshot Is Rejected as Symbol."
Under the headline: a photograph of the dead girl's house that seems framed to induce feelings of contempt in NYT readers. Low hills in the background. A rusty, non-upright, rural-style mailbox in the foreground. Unpaved driveway. The house — which seems to be constructed from a long trailer attached to a cinderblock foundation — has a porch with a rusted metal roof held down in one corner by an automobile tire. ...
...Equally strong? Does Trip Gabriel really know how these people feel? He's there, at the funeral, talking to them. But he's the reporter the NYT sent! Imagine yourself in a small town, at the funeral for a 2-year-old girl and there's a NYT reporter, who you know is there because these elite people somewhere, who never otherwise pay any attention to you, see potential to use that girl's dead body for leverage in a national political debate. I don't imagine myself anything nearly this polite:...
...Ah, so the media did get some satisfaction. How long did they harass these poor people before they tipped some grief-stricken man to say what they knew somebody ought to say? I'm assuming one man said that quote, even though the article says "Two other men told..." (as if we are to picture a unison declamation).
The reporters at the funeral call to mind the Westboro Church protesters, who target funerals and love to stand their ground, exercising free speech rights, as if their very purpose was to cause some emotionally overwrought mourner to lash out physically.
