How UnAmerican Radical Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Would Turn America Into One Big Free Fire Zone
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has been among the Senate’s most vocal backers of draconian budget cuts and has opposed increasing funds to put more police officers on the streets, said Wednesday that he will oppose gun violence prevention legislation because budget cuts will mean inadequate police forces to protect the public.
Graham told Baltimore Chief of Police James Johnson and former naval Captain Mark Kelly (husband of former Rep. Gabby Giffords) that he planned to oppose the gun violence measures because people will need high-capacity magazines to compensate for the police response times these austerity measures will force:
GRAHAM: The point is, we have different perspectives on this. The reason I will oppose the legislation, Chief Johnston, is because i respect what your do as a lot — what you do as a law-enforcement officer. Has your budget been cut?
JOHNSON: Yes.
GRAHAM: Do you think it be cut in the future?
JOHNSON: I am optimistic that it is not.
GRAHAM: Well I hope your right, but I can tell people throughout this land, because of the fiscal state of affairs we have, there will be less [SIC] police officers, not more, over the next decade. Response time are gonna be less, not more. So, Captain Kelly, I really do want to get guns out of the hands of the wrong people. I honest to god believe that if we arbitrarily “say nobody in this country can own a 10-round magazine in the future, the people who own them are the kind of people we’re trying to combat to begin with.” There can be a situation where a mother runs out of bullets because of something we do here.
President Obama has proposed expanding the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which helps local governments hire police officers, but Republicans have opposed the effort.
In this very good report about the experiences of trained professionals with guns - Your Brain in a Shootout: Guns, Fear and Flawed Instincts - even law enforcement and ex-military cannot hit their targets much of the time under pressure. So wacko Lindsay Graham is going to have people with little to no training with semi-automatic assault weapons spraying their neighborhoods with bullets to keep safe. By all means have a safely stored gun for self protection, but why this crazed overzealous reaction to reasonable gun safety regulation.
