March 02, 2004

Somethin' happened in the Senate dealin' with guns today

I have read about somethin' ever'one seems to think is some really important whatever on nearly ever' damned blog on my blogroll, and yet, I am not sure what the fork happened. Anyone able to present a clear, elementary picture of what occurred so as to educate an addle-pated old man? Some of us have been bamboozled by congressional activities for so long, we cannot see what is real from the sleight-of-hand. Do I need to turn in my shotgun yet? I really need it to protect myself from the occasional invadin' rat or bat or squirrel, possum, etc. I don't have any shells, but I can damn sure club them to death with the butt of that thing.

Posted by notGeorge at March 2, 2004 08:31 PM
Comments

Here you go, ol' man (your description :-))

- House passed a bill that would shield gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits.
- Senate takes up same bill.
- Democrats and some Republicans attach an amendment to the bill that would extend the assault weapons ban by 10 years. They also attached an amendment that would require new gun sales to include trigger locks, but that wasn't very controversial.
- The Dems thought they pulled off quite the coup because they assumed that the lawsuit protection was so important to the Republicans that they would pass it even with the extension of the assault weapons ban.
- Dems were wrong. The whole bill was voted down 90-8.

So, we don't get lawsuit protection for the gun manufacturers, but we also don;t get the extension of the assault weapons ban.

Make sense?

Posted by: Owen at March 2, 2004 09:31 PM

Yep, thanks for dumbin' it down enough for me to get a grasp on what occurred. ;)

Posted by: Tiger at March 2, 2004 09:59 PM

What he said. ;]

Posted by: Ironbear at March 2, 2004 11:12 PM