Last updated on April 24th, 2013 at 01:13 pm
Follow the crazy ball of conservative logic, in which the bombing/shooting in Boston allegedly by several Chechen immigrants naturally means that we should not pass immigration reform. Thus, we shouldn’t implement any kind of gun safety legislation even after repeated mass shootings by white men, but immigration reform should be killed because several immigrants allegedly bombed Boston.
Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa has already sounded the alarms to kill immigration reform because we are not safe:
“Given the events of this week, it’s important for us to understand the gaps and loopholes in our immigration system,” he said. “While we don’t yet know the immigration status of the people who have terrorized the communities in Massachusetts, when we find out, it will help shed light on the weaknesses of our system.”
“How can individuals evade authorities and plan such attacks on our soil?” he continued. “How can we beef up security checks on people who wish to enter the U.S.? How do we ensure that people who wish to do us harm are not eligible for benefits under the immigration laws, including this new bill before us?”
Well, it might be a good start for Grassley to tell his party to get off of their bums and agree to raise a bit of revenue so we can put an end to the sequester cuts they say won’t hurt us, even as those very cuts negatively impact our homeland security resources (including border security — head/desk).
The usual suspects weighed in with their reliably right wing Jump to Conclusions Mat Win (h/t Washington Post):
It’s too bad Suspect # 1 won’t be able to be legalized by Marco Rubio, now.
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) April 19, 2013
And Bryan Fisher’s helpful take:
I think we can safely say that Rubio’s amnesty plan is DOA. And should be. Time to tighten, not loosen, immigration policy.
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) April 19, 2013
Every time a white man goes on a shooting rampage, we’re told that he’s “one lone wolf”. If he was a white supremacist or anti-government extremist or sick paranoiac who thought the world was ending/Obama was coming for his guns and also listened to Glenn Beck or Fox News, we were told “he’s a bad apple”. If he shot at a Democratic lawmaker after being told over and over again that ObamaCare was going to lead to Death Panels, he was “crazy”.
Let an immigrant or brown-skinned person do any of the above and it’s justification to mistrust the entire race/religion/ethnicity and implement laws codifying that prejudice/fear.
Former National Rifle Association president Marion Hammer tried to suggest in January that banning guns was the same thing as the racial discrimination the GOP so readily engages in, “banning people and things because of the way they look went out a long time ago. But here they are again. The color of a gun. The way it looks. It’s just bad politics.” Right, so no banning of guns based on their “color”. Just ban the people based on their “color”/ethnicity/religion.
We’re also told that guns don’t kill, people do (same can be said of bombs, another exceptionally low-brow bumper sticker slogan) and the good guys need guns so they can kill the bad guys (no word on whether all Americans need bombs or tankers yet- stay tuned).
Yet, here we have several suspects who reportedly had assault weapons in Boston, the day after the Senate Republicans killed the background checks bill. We’ll leave aside the allegations that the NRA blocked legislation to trace a chemical used in the marathon bombing, because it’s a bit more complicated than that — but we already have enough to cause the logic mainframe to self-implode in defeat.
The argument for background checks is simple. As it stands now, our laws allow for terrorists to get their hands on weapons of mass destruction legally. Also, gun running — but we know that only bothers the right when they’re pretending to care about the life of an after-born human in order to justify impeaching Obama.
The actions of several people are obviously not an accurate reflection of the entire group. But if conservatives are really so concerned about national security that they think we need to shut down our borders, I have to ask how we would pay for that under the sequester cuts to border security, the FBI, FEMA, the National Guard, and more.
Republicans need to stand tall for their alleged economic principles that outweigh homeland security on all fronts. When they were in power, you weren’t allowed to tell an audience that you were ashamed, but now that they are out of power, they are against us at every turn while claiming economic patriotism as a get out of jail free card.
Days ago, conservatives were hyperventilating that the parents of murdered Sandy Hook children were politicizing their children by daring to show up to the background check vote. Today, we have conservatives politicizing the actions of a few to indict the many.
Image: Sazbean
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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