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The GOP's leading wordsmith and propagandist, Frank Luntz, made an appearance on CBS News this Wednesday morning and stated the obvious to anyone who has watched how the NRA reacted to the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT and who understands who the organization actually represents -- they're not paying attention to public opinion.

Of course they're not Frank. They're representing the gun manufacturers. Luntz's own polling has shown that the NRA's membership doesn't even agree with them.

GOP pollster: "I don't think the NRA is listening":

Luntz said that based on his polling and conversations with lawmakers in Washington, "the public is asking, if not insisting that something be done so that this does not happen again."

"The public wants guns out of the schools, not in the schools," Luntz said, speaking to the NRA's response to the Newtown shooting, in which the organization advocated for armed guards in schools across the U.S.

"I don't think the the NRA is listening. I don't think they understand," Luntz said. "Most Americans would protect Second Amendment rights and yet agree with the idea that not every human being should own a gun, not every gun should be available at any time, anywhere, for anyone - that at gun shows you should not be able to buy something right there and then without any check whatsoever."

Luntz added that what Americans are looking for from gun control legislation is "a common sense approach that says that those who are law-abiding should continue to have the right to own a weapon, but don't believe the right should be extended to everyone at every time for every time of weapon."

And when it comes to public opinion on the looming "fiscal cliff," Luntz said his polling indicates that Americans believe the GOP is primarily fighting for "the rich" and "big business" over "hardworking taxpayers," but added that on the other side of the aisle, "what the Democrats don't understand is the hostility towards how much Washington spends."

Luntz might be right when you talk in broad generalities about that spending, but when you break it down to specific issues like whether they want to see Social Security or Medicare cut, you're going to see some different results.

h/t Raw Story

You've just got to love these Republicans. They attack teachers and their unions and their collective bargaining rights, and then turn around and expect them to do double duty as law enforcement. Here's what's becoming an all too common idea from the wingnuts out there who think more guns is the solution to everything: Oklahoma Republican’s bill would arm teachers and train them like law enforcement:

McCullough plans to introduce legislation that would give school teachers and administrators the right to carry firearms in school. Under current law in Oklahoma, it is a felony to possess a gun on school property.

“I’m going to err on the side of trusting my teachers if it comes down to it,” the lawmaker explained. “I am not going to trust a madman.”

And McCullough explained to KOKH’s Marisa Mendelson that parents shouldn’t worry because teachers would required to get the same type of Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training (CLEET) certification that police officers have.

“These teachers would be trained at the same level as our law enforcement are currently trained,” he said. “They would be trained in target acquisition, in marksmanship. They would be trained in all of the things that our current police officers are trained in.”

Oklahoma parent Tom Jones, however, wasn’t comforted by McCullough’s assurances.

“I don’t believe that’s the answer, I really don’t,” Jones insisted. “I’d have to ask, how are you going to screen the teachers? How do you know you don’t have a mentally ill person?”

Republican state Sen. Ralph Shortey is also on board with McCullough’s plan, but he said that he would allow any teacher with a concealed-carry permit to bring firearms into the school without additional training.

“When citizens have the liberty to protect themselves, they will do so, and they will do so responsibly,” Shortey told The Oklahoman.

These people aren't going to be happy until they take us back to the days of the wild, wild west. Virginia's Governor Ultra-Sound-McDonnell wants to do the same thing in his state as well: Virginia Governor McDonnell Wants More Guns In Schools.

And we heard the same from Texas wingnut Gov. Rick Perry: Rick Perry Tells Tea Party: Allow More Guns in Schools .

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After the NRA finally crawled out from under their rock and released a statement on the shooting at the Newtown, CT elementary school and promised a press conference this coming Friday where they said they were "prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again," MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell had a few words for the NRA and its head, Wayne LaPierre during his Rewrite segment this Tuesday evening.

Lawrence O’Donnell Rewrites NRA’s ‘blood-drenched’ boss:

But in his latest Rewrite, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell noted a prominent theme in past statements by NRA head Wayne LaPierre, who O’Donnell called “blood-drenched,” after gun violence grabbed national headlines. To highlight it, he focused on a recent statement by LaPierre in the wake of a gun violence story going national when the NRA boss said, “There’s a lot of different ways this crime could have been committed.”

O’Donnell argued, however, when it comes to the Sandy Hook horror, there are not “a lot of different ways” that crime could have been committed. ”There is only one way,” O’Donnell said. “The way that Wayne LaPierre wants to preserve: mass murder by firearm, an all-too-common American way of death.”

O’Donnell also noted some facts from a 2011 Harvard School of Public Health study on gun safety. O’Donnell read from the study:

“A Harvard School of Public Health study finds ‘the health risk of a gun in the home is greater than the benefit… that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns… (and) that a gun in the home is a risk factor for intimidation and for killing women in their homes.’ The Harvard study also found, quote: ‘… there is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in.”

In the face of those facts, O’Donnell says there is one certainty about what Wayne LaPierre and the NRA will say during the group’s press conference on Friday. “We know this,” O’Donnell said. “There is nothing Wayne LaPierre can say, there are no words that can wash the blood from his hands.”

The NRA has been pretty quiet all week and we've had the really extreme wingnuts coming out of the woodwork instead to defend their positions. We all assume once they finally do make a statement and offer their "meaningful contribution" to the dialog, it will just be more of the same like we've seen from their cohorts, wanting more guns in the schools.

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Bill O'Reilly caught a really bad case of selective amnesia on his show this Monday night, when he pretended he didn't have any idea that his fellow host at Fox had gone on the air, not once, but at least three times, blaming the shooting at the elementary school in Newtown, CT on the "removal of god" from our schools.

Bill-O had his regular guest, flame thrower Bernard Goldberg on and the two of them were very quick to attack MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell for supposedly politicizing the shooting because she dared to talk about the fact that maybe we should have some reasonable gun laws in the United States. But when Goldberg actually criticized Fox for doing the same thing and politicizing the attack to suit an agenda, and without calling out Huckabee by name, slammed him for his remarks about school prayer, O'Reilly decided to act like he didn't have a clue as to what Goldberg was talking about.

If O'Reilly needs a refresher as to Huckabee's remarks, someone can tell him to go watch what he said here and here. As much as O'Reilly hates but follows Media Matters, who have had this on their front page for days now, I don't think there's a chance in hell he didn't know about what HuckaJesus said.

Here's your "fair and balanced" discussion on Fox. Goldberg with false equivalencies and Bill-O pretending he doesn't know about the hackery from the religious wingnut on his own network.

And if anyone needed any more proof that Huckabee is a blathering idiot, go read this article from this past April: Gunman Kills 7 in a Rampage at a Northern California University.

From Majority FM: Right Wing: Everything BUT Guns Caused the Newtown Massacre:

Did you know teachers, unions, and the lack of both God and George Zimmerman are at fault for the Newtown school shooting? The Tea Party Nation thinks so! In both a post on their website and in an email from founder Judson Phillips, the group blamed the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on everything BUT guns...

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It never fails. Every time we have another one of these mass shootings in the United States, someone in the corporate media is going to book this guy to carry water for the NRA and their desire to just turn us into the wild west and eliminate all gun safety laws. Gun advocate John Lott found himself getting some push back on his views from CNN's Soledad O'Brien this Monday morning though, unlike some of his interviews when he's in friendlier territory, like Fox:

CNN Anchor Destroys Gun Advocate’s Call To Abolish Gun Safety Laws: Victims’ Families ‘Would Be Stunned’:

The debate on gun control has been re-inflamed by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on Friday. President Obama has signaled that he may consider new legislation to prevent more attacks. Most gun rights advocates, however, have either stayed silent or insisted that the teachers at the school should have been armed. Gun rights advocate John Lott, the leading academic behind the claim that more guns result in less violence, appeared on CNN’s Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien to advance his pet theory.

O’Brien attacked Lott for his claim that Friday’s shooting means we should do away with all restrictions on guns. Lott argued that bans on guns in certain areas attract criminals to those areas: [...]

Lott’s claim that more guns result in less violence is popular with gun control advocates, but it’s simply not true. Lott’s research methods have been frequently called into question, and other experts have dismissed his work as “junk science.” As the Washington Post points out, concealed weapon bans have not increased the crime rate, as pro-gun advocates claimed, and there is no solid evidence that right-to-carry laws reduce violence.

Media Matters has more on Lott here: Who Is Gun Advocate John Lott?:

Gun researcher John Lott has made numerous media appearances in the wake of the mass shooting in Newtown, Conn. to argue against the enactment of gun violence prevention measures. While Lott uses his media platform to push a multitude of statistics -- often from his own research -- he has been thoroughly discredited as a serious academic researcher. Read on...

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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And I await the collective freakout by the right for the President finally daring to say that something needs to be done to try to reduce the amount of gun violence in the United States: At memorial, Obama pledges effort to reduce gun violence:

President Barack Obama, speaking at a memorial service for the victims of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, said on Sunday the United States was not doing enough to protect its children and pledged in coming weeks to launch an effort to reduce violence in the country.

"We can't tolerate this anymore. These tragedies must end. And to end them we must change," Obama said at a somber interfaith service.

"In the coming weeks I'll use whatever power this office holds to engage my fellow citizens from law enforcement to mental health professionals to parents and educators in an effort aimed at preventing more tragedies like this," he said. "Because what choice do we have? We can't accept events like this as routine."

Transcript via below the fold:

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After watching the better part of a couple of days of coverage on this tragic school shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in CT, I was glad to see at least one show on television where there was a discussion about the fact that what happened there, and the trauma that those children and their families are going through right now, is an all but too common occurrence which is sadly all too familiar to Americans living in our inner cities across the country.

Whether it's Chicago, or New Orleans or the other big cities across the country facing high crime rates, far too often the violence has been glossed over and ignored to the point by our national media, that it's just considered acceptable or something we're expected to live with.

As Melissa noted, to date Chicago has suffered at least 425 gun-related homicides in 2012 as of Dec. 14. The Huffington Post has more on that story here: Chicago Homicides Reach 400 This Year, City Turns To Twitter For Ideas To End Violence. And 117 of those victims this year alone were under the age of 21.

And in her home town of New Orleans, we've had 174 murders, most of which are gunshot deaths and in Los Angeles, there have been 512 homicides recorded for the year, and 75 percent of those deaths resulted from gunshot wounds.

HARRIS-PERRY: These are the gun related homicides that get treated as routine -- tragic, but expected. And yet, they need to be included when we talk about Newtown, CT, because their victims are just as real.

The Nation's Ari Melber followed with this:

MELBER: So while we understand exactly how terrible this is and why the story of it and the way it happened is so dramatic and we're rushing to it and the President's speaking to it, it's also true as a policy matter that if 27 people dying is something that connotes the President's attention or our attention and action, well then every day is this day, as you were saying and all around the country.

As Michael Eric Dyson noted, President Obama did bring up those in Chicago during his statement following this most recent shooting and made this important point:

DYSON: The reality is, we've become accustomed to believing that little black and brown kids and poor white kids in various spots across our landscape are doomed to this kind of violence by this... we are surprised it happened here. It's not supposed to happen here.

Which means by implication, that it's supposed to happen there, in Detroit, or Oakland, or California, in LA and the like. And I think that's the tragedy here.

As Harris-Perry rightfully noted a bit later in the segment, she just wants the same level of outrage when you're seeing these kids in our inner cities having their childhoods taken away from them with the violence that they are growing up around as a part of their daily lives as we've seen from these mass shootings that garner so much national attention in the media.

I hope if there is an ounce of good that comes out of this shooting, it's that conversations like this one are more common where we're talking about what we can do to put a stop to gun violence along with a host of other topics that are all interwoven with the same subject and those are not just gun control and gun violence, but mental health, providing adequate health care for all of our citizens, education, poverty, our social safety nets and just what kind of country we're allowing way too many of our children to grow up in.

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From the Young Turks: Cenk on #CTShooting (Part 1): ‘They don’t want you to talk about it now because they don’t want you to talk about it ever’:

Cenk weighs in on the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Conn., asking again what it will take for politicians to act on gun control.

“There’s no way in the world they all would have been dead if that shooter didn’t have a gun,” he says. “No way, no how. People will make their ridiculous arguments…about how you can kill people with other things… but they don’t. They kill them with guns. And they killed 20 young kids today with a gun. They tell us, not now, not now. Don’t talk about it. Don’t politicize it. It’s a trick. They don’t want you to talk about it now because they don’t want you to talk about it ever. Because they don’t want to fix it. People like the NRA and who represent gun manufactuers want to sell guns and more guns at all costs. All costs, at costs even as high as this. Which is why they will send all their lap dogs in politics — which is almost all of the Republicans and a significant chunk of the Democrats — to say ‘not now.’ If not now, when? When do we talk about it?”