The Voters In Colorado were screwed by the NRA

Sen. Angela Giron & John Morse

Before I start to write this post, I want to say today is the 12th anniversary of the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and the plane that crashed in Shanksville PA. I will take the time and write two post to my blog today and I will be talking about 9/11 and my thoughts in my details in my next post coming later today. Now moving on to why I'm writing this post. Yesterday was the recall elections in the state of Colorado of two Democratic State Senators named John Morse and Angela Giron and I was on Twitter last night and I was shocked when I found out that these two brave Senators lost the election. At first I was mad because I thought that these voters just were against these gun restriction laws and just voted these Senators out of office, I even thought that these people are morons. Then I wake up this morning and I was reading the Huffington Post and read that piece and it changed my mind on what happened in the recall election in Colorado. I will be providing a link to the piece at the end of this post.

Now in my personal opinion I think that the NRA and the Koch Brothers stole this election and then they had the nerve to say that freedom won. I will provide quotes from the piece to show why I formed this opinion. Some background information first "Morse and Giron both voted in favor of the legislation, signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) in March, which requires background checks for all firearm purchases and bans ammunition magazines over 15 rounds." I'm honestly not surprised when I read that all of the outrage is because of background checks. All this law says if you buy guns you need a background check that's it, I personally would have gone much further then that, what are these gun lover so afraid of? I don't get it, what are they so scared of? Are all gun owners criminals? That's what is seems like to me, because they are afraid of some background checks.By the way I don't think all gun owners are criminals I was just trying to make a point. The problem is that most sensible gun owners are not against background checks most of the polls show that. However the problem is that NRA and the Koch Brothers are against anything that may hurt the profits of the gun manufacturers. This is another reason why we need to regulate how Political Action Committee or PAC's spend their money because the piece also said that "The NRA spent heavily on the recall effort, reporting at least $360,000 and funneling unspecified dollars through its nonprofit arm. The billionaire conservative Koch brothers also entered the fray, using their advocacy group Americans For Prosperity to target Morse and Giron. Due to the organization's nonprofit status, AFP also did not have to report its spending to the Federal Elections Commission." Our Politics is run by money and in my opinion that's the reason why we are losing our democracy to these billionaires and corporations and my fear is that politicians will learn the wrong lessons from this elections and not fight for sensible gun regulations because they are afraid of the NRA. Most politicans are all cowards so they will not fight for sensible guns regulations.

The piece lists another example that the NRA and the Koch's stole this election from the people "A get-out-the-vote canvasser for Giron, who requested anonymity out of safety concerns, said gun rights activists also engaged in "extreme voter intimidation" at polling centers in Pueblo on Tuesday."We had to call the police on a van of four huge guys staking out our staging location, the canvasser told HuffPost. "Volunteers are being followed, threatened, having their pictures taken and yelled at. We're now being told that it's bad enough to call 911 immediately." This is according to someone that was there at the time and I'm not saying that the NRA or the Koch Bothers sent these nut jobs out there in order to intimidate potential voters, these people could have done this on there own but these people that did this are anti American and they missed the whole point of our great nation. "A Quinnipiac poll released last month found that 82 percent of Colorado voters supported expanded background checks for gun sales. But respondents were split down the middle on the 15-round magazine limit." Most people in a favor of background checks and gun manufacturers oops I meant the NRA don't give a damn what the people say about that.

What made me mad was the NRA then released a condescending statement about their "victory" and it said that "The people of Colorado Springs sent a clear message to the Senate leader that his primary job was to defend their rights and freedoms and that he is ultimately accountable to them -- his constituents, and not to the dollars or social engineering agendas of anti-gun billionaires" the anti-gun billionaires is in reference to Michael Bloomberg the mayor of NYC and I don't agree with Bloomberg on everything but I do agree with him on this issue. So what do we progressives do about this issue? Do we give up? Or do we keep on fight the NRA and the Koch bothers? If you've been reading my blog for a while then you already know the answer to these questions. We need to keep fighting in NRA if we don't then the whole country loses because we will be flooded with more and more guns and more and more Americans will die because of gun violence. Come on progressives keep up the good fight, we need to win this fight!

Link to the piece: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10/colorado-recall-results_n_3903209.html?utm_hp_ref=politics 

"Stand Your Ground" Laws have basically legalized Murder

Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman

In the last few months we've heard more and more about people just shooting other human beings in cold blood and then using the "Stand your ground" law as a defense. This is especially true in the state of Florida the most infamous case being the Trayvon Martin killing. If you are reading this entry and you've not been living under a rock over the last year then you know the details of the horrible injustice of this case. This case is relevant to this entry because the man that committed and got away with the murder George Zimmerman used the "Stand your ground" law in Florida as a defense in his trial and he was found not guilty. If I was on that jury no matter what the law is in the state of Florida, I could not bring myself knowing the facts of the case to find Zimmerman not guilty, because no matter the laws all of the proof points to Zimmerman being guilty of at least manslaughter.

The relevant statue is 776.013 (3) which says that "A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes//index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html)
 In my opinion this statue has legalized murder because that statue says that "including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." In other words that means that if I had a gun and I shot someone, all I have to say is that I thought my life was in danger and I can get away with murder. I don't think that's right and in my opinion these stand your ground laws have just legalized murder.

Another example of this is the man by the name of William T. Woodward he's 44 years old and he's from the state of Florida of course he had shot three of his neighbors and killed two of them the details of the case are"Police had responded to the neighborhood multiple times in the past, reportedly because of an ongoing feud between the two parties. Officials say they previously offered to mediate the dispute, but when officers arrived at the scene on Tuesday they found that Gary Lee Hembree, Roger Picior, and Bruce Timothy Blake had all been shot. Hembree and Picior were mortally wounded, but Blake survived despite being shot at least 11 times. Blake later told Wesh.com that he needed to call the police dozens of times on Woodward, who is a combat veteran." (http://rt.com/usa/bush-stand-ground-florida-homicide-433/) In my opinion the Stand your ground laws encourage people to shoot and kill each other because now Woodward is using the stand your ground law and the "Bush Doctrine" for some reason which I don't understand because the "Bush Doctrine" was used in order to provide legal justification for the war in Iraq in order to defend himself from murder and attempted murder charges. The bottom line is that these laws have legalized murder and in my opinion makes people in Florida even more afraid and makes them but more and more guns which makes the gun manufacturers more and more money, maybe that was real intention of these laws...just a thought.