Ryan, top Republicans urge caution on post-Orlando gun control measures

Donald Trump's gun control politics spark controversy

House Speaker Paul Ryan and other top Republicans pushed back Thursday on growing calls from Democrats to ban people on terror watch lists from buying guns, even as Donald Trump and other GOP figures opened the door to discussing it.
Calls for action have increased in the wake of the terror massacre at Pulse nightclub in Orlando that left 50 people, including the gunman, dead on Sunday. The gunman, Omar Mateen, had been on a watch list for 10 months before being removed.
“We want to make sure that something like this doesn't happen again. Everybody wants that," Ryan told reporters Thursday. "But as we look at how to proceed, we also want to make sure that we're not infringing upon people's legitimate constitutional rights. That's important.”
Ryan's comments come a day after Trump indicated potential support for new gun laws in this area.
“I will be meeting with the N.R.A., who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no-fly list, to buy guns,” the presumptive GOP presidential nominee tweeted Wednesday.
Whether Trump would support an outright ban or just a delay for gun sales for those on watch lists is not clear.
That is the sticking point right now in the Senate.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and other Democrats are pushing a measure to ban those on no-fly lists from purchasing weapons.
But Republicans worry about such a measure infringing on gun rights for someone wrongly included on such a list.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has a dueling measure to delay a gun sale for 72 hours, but require prosecutors to go to court to show probable cause if they want to block the sale permanently.
Cornyn’s bill has been backed by the NRA.
Meanwhile, Republican Sens. Charles Grassley, of Iowa, and Ted Cruz, of Texas, have a measure that would notify law enforcement if anyone investigated for terrorism in the last five years tries to buy a gun -- in addition to making other changes.
Democrats drew more attention to their version of the legislation Wednesday night as Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., held the floor along with colleagues in a nearly 15-hour filibuster that lasted into the early hours Thursday.
"We can't just wait, we have to make something happen," said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., at an emotional news conference where Democrats joined family members of people killed in the nation's recent mass shootings. "These are people bound by brutality, and their numbers are growing."
But Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blasted Murphy's filibuster as a "campaign talk-a-thon" that did nothing but delay potential votes.
Cruz also slammed Democrats, saying on the Senate floor the Democrat effort was nothing more than a political distraction that avoided the real issues.
“I find it ridiculous that in response to an ISIS terror attack, the Democrats go on high dudgeon that we've got to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Cruz said. “This is not a gun control issue, this is a terrorism issue.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called Cornyn's bill a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and said it would allow "every terrorist to get a gun." Clinton's spokesman, Brian Fallon, called Cornyn's bill a "smokescreen."
Cornyn responded angrily.
"That's an incredibly ignorant thing for her to say," Cornyn said. "That anybody can be denied their constitutional rights without due process of law and without the government coming forward and establishing probable cause, that's simply un-American."
A possible bipartisan compromise was proposed by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Toomey said Wednesday his bill would prevent potential terrorists from getting a gun, while providing an extra layer of due process that the Democratic bill lacks.
“I have drafted legislation that takes the best features from both of the previous proposals, effectively preventing terrorists from being able to purchase guns, while also safeguarding the rights of innocent Americans who are mistakenly put on the list,” Toomey said.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department backed a ban on gun sales to those on watch lists.
“The amendment gives the Justice Department an important additional tool to prevent the sale of guns to suspected terrorists by licensed firearms dealers while ensuring protection of the department’s operational and investigative sensitivities," a DOJ official said in a statement.
The DOJ’s stance is a departure from past warnings from FBI Director James Comey, who reportedly has said a ban could alert terrorists they are being investigated.
Ryan cited those remarks when talking to reporters.
“As the FBI director just told us the other day, and I think he said this publicly, if we do this wrong, like the president is proposing, we can actually blow our ongoing terrorist investigations. So, we want to get this right, so that we don't undermine terrorist investigations,” Ryan said.

Alleged DNC oppo file casts Trump as 'misogynist in chief'

People claiming to have hacked the Democratic National Committee have released what they say is the party's playbook for running against Donald Trump.
The over 200 pages of purported opposition research aimed at the "divisive and dangerous" Trump surfaced just days after Russian hackers breached DNC databases. The "Donald Trump Report" was created on Dec. 19, before Trump even won his first primary.
Gawker obtained the documents. A Romanian hacker named "Gucifer 2.0" claimed credit, saying this was just "one of the many thousands" of documents acquired through hacking the DNC.
The contents include many familiar lines of attack, including Trump's controversial remarks, past failed business deals, "dangerous" political policies and attitudes toward women.

'Hell No!' Cashier refuses to serve Trump backers

Riggs, (l.), and Wolfrey, (r.), just wanted a burger, but got a side of partisanship.

Shannon Riggs and her cousins were famished after attending a Donald Trump rally last week in Richmond, Va., so they decided to drop by Cook Out – a regional restaurant chain known for its tasty burgers.
The group was decked out in Trump swag – from T-shirts to those iconic red hats emblazoned with the campaign’s slogan: “Make America Great Again.”
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But apparently the cashier at the Cook Out in Colonial Heights does not believe Trump can make America great again. Nor do they believe his supporters deserve to eat Cook Out hamburgers.
Riggs explained what happened during the June 10 incident to television station WTVR.
“As soon as we got to the window, someone inside said ‘Hell no! I’m not serving them,’” she recounted.

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They were denied service simply for being Trump supporters!
“You should not be discriminated (against) based on who you support, whether it be for Bernie, Hillary or Mr. Trump,” Ms Riggs told the television station.
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The folks at Cook Out disputed the notion that they denied the family service. A company spokesperson told me the manager on duty “immediately had someone else take the customer’s order.”
But while the family waited for their order – they said other workers laughed at them. Disgusted, they demanded a refund and left the restaurant.
“Once you witness discrimination first hand, it’s a totally different experience,” 16-year-old Lauren Wolfrey told the television station. “I was in a state of shock.
“They had this sense of anger,” she added. “They were just really rude to us.”
Cook Out conceded the employee violated their policy on rudeness.
“The manager on duty apologized and granted the customer a refund,” the spokesperson said. “The employee that was rude was immediately terminated per policy.”
The folks at Cook Out tell me they gladly feed everybody regardless of political affiliation – Republican or Democrat.
“This was an isolated action of a single person and does not represent the principles on which Cook Out operates,” the spokesperson told me. “To deny anyone from eating at one of our restaurants would never cross our mind and of course, would be totally ludicrous.”
Now had this been an isolated incident -- it would not be all that newsworthy. But there is a very disturbing pattern emerging this political season.
Trump supporters have been consistently and methodically bullied and intimidated - beaten and bloodied.
Remember what happened in San Jose, Calif., – when an angry mob brutally assaulted and terrorized his fans?
The effort to silence supporters of Donald Trump is not just outrageous. It’s unconstitutional. It’s un-American.
And it's a mighty sad day in these great United States when a person can't order a hamburger without getting a side of partisanship.

Obama Cartoons

After Orlando, Obama drops most partisan speech ever

Tuesday, our president came to us live from the Treasury Department. Allegedly, the purpose was to update Americans on the horrific Islamist terrorist attack at an LGBT club in Florida, as well as offer an update in the war against ISIS. But Obama reserved the second half of the speech for a vicious partisan diatribe. It would be as if FDR, partway through his “Day of Infamy” speech, began bashing Republicans for not supporting lend-lease.
The first sign that the president’s remarks were headed south came when he lapsed into yet another tired attempt to link effective counterterrorism with the debate on gun control.  Hijacking a tragedy to press a political agenda, however, is pure opportunism.
The Orlando attack is as much about a mass shooting as 9/11 was about a plane crash.
Terrorists use all kinds of weapons to kill. If government banned everything that can be used to kill people in great numbers, we would all have to live in empty rubber rooms.  Childproofing the world to make us safe from terrorists is not a responsible strategy.
If Obama wanted to debate gun control, and not look like a partisan hack, he would have chosen another time to make his case, and he would have started with the facts.
He could begin by explaining why data from Pew Research Center, the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention find that gun violence is at a 30-year low, even as gun ownership in America has expanded.
Obama saved his greatest invectives for attacking anyone who criticized him for not naming the enemy — and anyone using the term “radical Islam.” In the most superficial way, he is right. Mouthing those words doesn’t shift the calculus of war any more than calling the German war machine Nazis got GIs up the cliffs at Normandy.
But Obama’s verbal assault was pure bait and switch. What has Americans really upset is not whether he mouths particular words, but the belief that the debate over words reflects a deeper concern. Their concern is that Obama is not prosecuting a winning war. He ignores the fact that his counterterrorism strategy has been off course since 2010.
Worse, Obama implied that disagreeing was “un-American” and anti-Muslim. He ignored the fact that many who use the term “radical Islam” add the qualifier “radical” to differentiate the Islamist threat from the global Muslim community.
By labeling his detractors racist and know-nothings, he simply reinforces what many Americans already believe:  Obama is divider, not a uniter. 

The enemy is radical Islam, not the National Rifle Association

Over the past eight years - the Obama administration has never let a crisis go to waste. The Orlando terrorist attack was no different.
President Obama co-opted an Islamic radical terrorist attack and turned it into a campaign to ban “assault rifles” (their words, not mine).
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“We have to make it harder for people who want to kill Americans to get their hands on weapons of war that let them kill dozens of innocents,” the president declared.
So does he plan on confiscating our pressure cookers? What about fertilizer or cutlery or jetliners? Would that make us safer?
“Enough talking about being tough on terrorism,” the president said in a lecture to the nation on Tuesday. “Actually be tough on terrorism, and stop making it easy as possible for terrorists to buy assault weapons.”
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If the president really wanted to be tough on terrorism, he would actually acknowledge the real enemy and he would stop making it easy for the jihadists to cross our borders.
“Reinstate the assault weapons ban,” he demanded. “Make it harder for terrorists to use these weapons to kill us.”
How about making sure Americans have the tools necessary to defend themselves and their families against the jihadists? How about you stop being an apologist for the Islamists – and start being a Commander-in-Chief for the United States?
The mainstream media has been more than willing to take up the president's cause.
The New York Daily News leading the charge with a front page headline blaming the National Rifle Association for the Orlando massacre.
In today's edition - they accused NRA members of being traitors. Traitors.
“Thanks, NRA. Because of your continued opposition to an assault rifle ban, terrorists like this lunatic can legally buy a killing machine and perpetrate the worst mass shooing in U.S. history,” another headline screamed.
Can you believe people actually read this garbage?
The anti-gun crowd has become unhinged. Truth is, most of them would not be able to tell the difference between an AR-15 and a Super Soaker.
They do not understand this central truth: the Second Amendment protects all of the other Amendments.
What happened in Orlando was the work of a jihadist - not a law-abiding NRA member. It was an Islamic radical who slaughtered those people -- not a deer hunter.
Chris Cox, the executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, summed it up nicely in a USA Today editorial:
“It’s time for us to admit that radical Islam is a hate crime waiting to happen. The only way to defeat them is to destroy them – not destroy the right of law-abiding Americans to defend ourselves.”
The enemy is radical Islam, folks -- not the NRA.
Todd Starnes is host of Fox News & Commentary, heard on hundreds of radio stations. His latest book is "God Less America: Real Stories From the Front Lines of the Attack on Traditional Values." Follow Todd on Twitter@ToddStarnes and find him on Facebook.

'Define the enemy': Republicans counter Obama's 'radical Islam' slam

Republicans roundly rejected President Obama’s rationale for refusing to use the term “radical Islam” in describing terror attacks, responding that: “You have to define the enemy to defeat it.”
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul, R-Texas, led the charge a day after the president delivered a point-by-point denunciation of his critics from the White House podium.
McCaul said “Churchill didn’t dance around the Nazis, he called it fascism,” while Presidents Reagan and Kennedy similarly confronted Communism.
“Now we have a generational threat struggle called Islamist extremism,” he said Wednesday.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump also delivered an unsparing rejoinder during a rally in Greensboro, N.C.
“[Obama] was more angry at me than he was at the shooter,” Trump said. “… That’s the kind of anger he should have for the shooter.”
The pushback comes after Obama made his most extensive comments yet challenging critics who have been on his case for years over avoiding the term “radical Islam,” including after Sunday’s Orlando terror massacre where the shooter professed support for the Islamic State.
“Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. … There’s no magic to the phrase of radical Islam,” Obama said Tuesday. “It’s a political talking point.”
Obama went on to warn of a slippery slope in this debate, citing Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration – a proposal many in Trump’s party do not support, including House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“We don’t have religious tests here,” Obama said, without attacking Trump by name. But answering one of Trump’s most frequent accusations, the president said his reluctance to use the phrase “radical Islam” has “nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.”
He said groups like ISIS “want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims … who reject their crazy notions,” and a move to single out Muslims in America “betrays the very values America stands for.”
Trump has not backed down on that call, even as Ryan and others in the party have voiced concern about his rhetoric.
“It we don’t get tough, and we don’t get smart -- and fast -- we’re not going to have a country anymore. There will be nothing left,” Trump said Monday.
The Obama administration, though, has only accelerated the pace of Syrian refugee admissions in recent weeks – which is a program Trump and other Republicans have warned could pose a security risk.
Deputy National Security Advisor Avril Haines said Tuesday that the administration is speeding up the admissions process, while still taking the necessary security precautions. According to Haines, “we’ve admitted about 3,500 Syrian refugees—more in the last five weeks than in the past seven months.”

Democratic senator wages filibuster to push vote on gun control measures

A Democratic senator ended a nearly 15-hour-long filibuster on the Senate floor early Thursday, part of an effort to force a vote on gun control legislation following Sunday's terror attack in Orlando.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., yielded the floor at 2:11 a.m., 14 hours and 50 minutes after he began speaking. Murphy kept up his filibuster to a mostly empty chamber, save for 38 Democratic senators who joined him and made their own speeches throughout the day. Two Republican senators, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, also made remarks.
Democrats were seeking a vote on two amendments to an underlying spending bill. One, proposed by Murphy, would expand background checks. The other, proposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., would let the government bar sales of guns and explosives to people it suspects of being terrorists.
Republicans argue that Feinstein's bill denies due process to people who may be on the terror list erroneously and are trying to exercise their constitutional right to gun ownership.
Near the end of the filibuster, Murphy said that Senate leaders had promised "a path forward" for floor votes on the legislation, but did not elaborate further.
As he began to speak Wednesday morning, Murphy said he would remain on the Senate floor "until we get some signal, some sign that we can come together," and evoked the Newtown school shooting in his state in 2012.
"For those of us that represent Connecticut, the failure of this body to do anything, anything at all in the face of that continued slaughter isn't just painful to us, it's unconscionable," Murphy said.
Separately Wednesday, the National Rifle Association reiterated its support for a bill from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, that would let the government delay firearms sales to suspected terrorists for up to 72 hours. Prosecutors would have to persuade a judge to block the transaction permanently, a bar Democrats and gun control activists say is too high.
The Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen, was added to a government watch list of individuals known or suspected of being involved in terrorist activities in 2013, when he was investigated for inflammatory statements to co-workers. But he was pulled from that database when that investigation was closed 10 months later.

Efforts to compromise between the Cornyn and Feinstein bills collapsed within hours of surfacing in the Senate Wednesday, underscoring the extreme difficulty of resolving the divisive issue five months to the election.
Meanwhile, Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control group backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said it was working on a compromise with Toomey.
By the end of the day Wednesday, Toomey, who is facing a tough re-election race this fall, had introduced legislation that would direct the attorney general to create a new list of suspected terrorists who could be barred from buying weapons. But Democrats immediately rejected that idea, saying it would create too much of a backlog.