Marco Rubio Must Be Destroyed

Since the Parkland shootings in Florida, Senator Marco Rubio has done many of the things liberals say they are desperate, desperate for decent Republicans to do. He has changed his position on gun control, expressing support for new restrictions: age limits on gun purchases, new background check rules, possibly magazine restrictions. He has co-sponsored legislation encouraging states to issue restraining orders that temporarily would strip people deemed dangerous of their guns.

.. March for Our Lives the students wore price tagsaround their neck, $1.05 each — the amount of money Rubio’s campaigns have received from the N.R.A. divided by the number of students in Florida schools. David Hogg, one of their leaders, began his speech with the price tag line, and told a CNN interviewer that if anything he feels that their attacks on the Florida senator haven’t been provocative enough.

.. Republican majorities were forged by anger and a kind of smash-mouth politics, it’s incumbent upon liberals to give no quarter in return, and to treat any sudden conciliation from a prominent figure like the Florida senator not as an opportunity for deal making but as a welcome sign of weakness that should inspire further fierce attack.

.. The problem, then, is relying on the bipartisan impulses of few Republican politicians when what you need is a broader climate change. The path to that change requires first putting the fear of God (or, if you prefer, the fear of the Arc of History) into vulnerable Republican lawmakers, and then making them unpopular enough that you can simply beat them.

.. he’s precisely the kind of Republican who needs to be defeated to build a Democratic supermajority.

.. the chance to make him the face of G.O.P. intransigence on gun control

.. The deeper logic here is that the only plausible mission for Democrats after the Trumpian takeover of the G.O.P. is a kind of Carthaginian peace: Delenda

.. it seems to me that once conservatism surrendered to Donald Trump, arguments about corrosion became a bit irrelevant.

.. the president that the Florida senator endorsed is as consistently ad hominem as the young school shooting survivors with rather less excuse.

.. one reason that the Dreamer amnesty was an executive decision that Donald Trump could simply reverse, landing us in our current immigration stalemate, was that the Obama White House deliberately chose to make it one, pre-empting an effort by, yes, Marco Rubio to craft bipartisan legislation.

.. Don’t let Republicans disguise their anti-immigrant views with modest bipartisan maneuvers, create a clear contrast so that voters will reward you even if doing so requires pushing certain constitutional limits on your power.

.. if anything Obama’s executive action contributed to Trump’s victory by helping to radicalize conservative voters

.. Marco Rubio who made an extended effort to move the bill in a more middle-class-friendly direction by adding and then enlarging a child tax credit. The push was opposed by many of his Republican colleagues, but for a time Rubio thought that he could get an amendment in with Senate Democrat support.

.. having watched the Trump G.O.P. hold power with a largely negative agenda and an ugly rhetorical style, I can certainly believe that a no-quarter liberalism will gain power eventually in its turn.

Pollak: March for Our Lives – This is What Demagoguery Looks Like

As far as protecting the lives of students is concerned — which is, ostensibly, the entire point — the march organizers were uninterested in an open conversation about what might actually be effective.

.. The speakers demanded legislation, but there was no more legislation to pass — at least, no legislation that would ever survive the Supreme Court. Many of the marchers simply want to repeal the Second Amendment. There was little room for discussion of reasonable proposals.

The third thing to know is that the marches were backed by big leftist organizations, and accompanied by get-out-the-vote efforts.

These are further signs that the marches are largely about mobilizing support for the Democratic Party in the 2018 midterm elections. The speakers made little effort to hide that fact. They called for national unity — against the Republican Party.

.. The marches have featured signs calling for the National Rifle Association to be banned outright. One sign attacked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — one of the moderate voices on this issue — as a “killer,” and questioned his Catholic faith.

.. The “children” who are being impressed into service for the left — some savoring their moment in the “revolutionary” spotlight — are being misled by adults who should know better. They are being taught that those who disagree with them are literally their mortal enemies. And they are being taught to hate the Second Amendment before most have been taught what it is, or why it exists.

.. But the very reason we have the Second Amendment — and the First Amendment, which makes these marches possible — is that the Founders of our Republic wanted to put certain liberties beyond the reach of the majority. They understood that the dignity of the individual — including the inherent, God-given right to self-defense — could not withstand the temporary passions of the moment without special protection.

And so it would be more accurate to say: “This is what demagoguery looks like.” If it is the model for the activism of the next generation, America is in grave danger.

.. Those who own guns — or cherish the right to own them — should see these marches as a wake-up call. The rights and freedoms that make our country great are just one Supreme Court seat, and perhaps one election, away from destruction. Beyond the political frustrations of the moment, that is what is at stake in November.

Buying guns is harder in Canada than in the U.S. A new bill would tighten gun laws even more.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is heeding those calls, announcing this past week a proposed law that would require more detailed background checks for gun owners and force retailers to maintain records of gun sales for at least 20 years.

.. The minister’s claim of sharply higher gun crime has since been challenged by criminologists and statisticians, who argue that 2013 had the lowest homicide rate in almost 50 years and that the overall rate of firearm homicides in Canada is up but not dramatically so.

Firearms are already much harder to acquire legally in Canada than in the United States, and the frequency of gun-related violence is markedly lower. But there is a long tradition of hunting and firearm ownership, particularly in rural parts of the country.

The previous Conservative government successfully courted the pro-gun constituency and in 2012 dismantled the decade-old firearms registry for rifles and shotguns, which was criticized by opponents as a waste of money and an intrusion into the right to hunt and shoot. Mandatory registration of handguns and other weapons deemed restricted and prohibited remained in effect.

The Trudeau government’s proposal would force all firearms vendors to maintain records and inventories of transactions and keep those records for 20 years. The records would be accessible to police only if they first obtain a warrant.

..  Sheldon Clare, president of the National Firearms Association, the most outspoken of Canada’s gun-owner groups, called the move the start of a process of “civil disarmament” and a backdoor path to a new government registry system.

.. The legislation would also require the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which issues firearms licenses, to examine a person’s entire life for potential problems, including criminal convictions. The current requirement mandates a five-year background search.

The new law would tighten rules on transporting restricted weapons, making it necessary to obtain authorization each time owners wished to take their guns anywhere other than a shooting range or club.

.. there were 223 firearm-related homicides in Canada in 2016, 44 more than the previous year. In Toronto alone, there were 51 firearm-related deaths in 2016, almost double the 27 reported a year earlier. The United States, which has roughly 10 times the population of Canada, reported 11,004 firearm homicides in 2016.

.. She noted that the supply of restricted and prohibited firearms has more than doubled in Canada over the past decade and said she was concerned that a firearm like the AR-15 could still be sold as a restricted weapon.