Tweet
Daniel Hernandez, rightly lauded as a hero for saving the life of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords during the shooting in Tucson, has stepped forward on the public policy issue of gun control, supporting a variety of changes to gun laws along the lines of what several lawmakers have proposed.
Daniel Hernandez, the intern who rushed to treat Giffords (D-Ariz.) after she was shot Jan. 8 in Tucson, is endorsing a new proposal from Mayors Against Illegal Guns that will require states to report mental-health cases to a federal database designed to screen gun purchases.
He will sit with Michelle Obama on Tuesday when her husband delivers the State of the Union address.
“It is my hope that President Obama and Congress will work together right away to reform our gun background-check system so that all records of dangerous people are in the system and all gun buyers will have to pass a thorough background check,” Hernandez said Monday in a statement.
Such changes should “be done in a way that does not infringe on Second Amendment rights,” he added, “so that responsible citizens may exercise their right to bear arms.”
This change would close the “gun show loophole,” which enables people to purchase firearms at gun shows without a background check. Another proposal would ban the type of high-capacity clips used by Jared Loughner in his rampage a few weeks ago.
The White House has been very tight-lipped about whether President Obama will even mention gun control in his speech. Daniel Hernandez, who will sit in the First Lady’s box, has already made his preference known.
While it doesn’t seem possible at this stage for these changes to get through a Republican House, recall that even Dick Cheney, who voted against the most obvious gun control measures while in the House in the 1980s, came out basically in favor of banning the high-capacity clips. The NRA vociferously opposes that, probably because gun sales executives who profit off those clips sit on their board and raise millions of dollars for them. If anything, this is even more true of the gun show loophole.
18 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
I like the idea of background checks, closing the “gun show loophole,” and — on some level — mental health should factor into gun control in some way (on the general principle: “Don’t give guns to crazy people.”) Nevertheless, such a national database would be nearly impossible to create without a violation of HIPAA rules, it seems to me.
A D gay Hispanic would not seem to have a lot of cred on gun control, hero or not.
It would seem at first glance Hernandez would have some sway in the public discourse, just from the fact of who he is and what he has done, but remember that we thought the same about James Brady, and his voice, and organization, have pretty much been silenced under the weight of the weapons lobby.
My thoughts exactly. That combined with what eCAHN said. Brady was a Republican and Press Sec’y to Reagan, and look how far he’s gotten… essentially nowhere, more’s the pity. I give Brady and his family a lot of props for what they’ve tried to do, but they’ve certainly been shut down by the guns ‘n ammo PTB.
The right will start the engines of destruction onto this guy, I g
Suggest you have his back. Right now go check out some of the forums in the guns rights community. See what they are saying and how they are attacking. He has already bowed down to the 2nd Amendment, he is just tweaking around the edges, but still they will not allow that. There can be no compromise on their side no matter how sensible.
In other news: Guns Outlawed At Palin Speaking Events
http://my.firedoglake.com/spocko/2011/01/24/guns-outlawed-at-palin-speaking-events/
Check it out.
Not to be a little snit or anything, but why is Hernandez a hero? According to the report of the FBI video tape, Giffords was the victim of the first shot fired, and was not hit with any of the following shots. The initial shot to the forehead was her only injury. So how did Hernandez save her life?
I’m not trying to be a douchebag. I’m sure there is something in his actions that I’m missing. I’d just like to know what it was. I haven’t read any account of how things actually played out.
This is just too contradictory, even for Caribou Barbie. She publicly derided the proposal to ban guns within 1000 feet of congress-critters. But she’s now doing the same thing. Un-fucking-believable.
This kind of shooting, even though there’s quite a list of them in the U.S., is still a rare event. You’ll never impede these event by any measure of gun control. The most you could hope for is to prevent a couple of people from becoming casualties at each such event, but even that’s doubtful, since the perp can always bring more weapons.
The real gun problem is gangs & poor neighborhoods.
Having the presence of mind to go to her:
I think they call it saving her life
According to what I read, he held her head upright which preventing her from drowning in her own blood, and also kept swelling, a major secondary cause of brain damage, to a minimum. Thus her amazing post-shooting progress.
Or something like that.
Thanks! I hadn’t read about that. I was honestly just wondering. The guy has gotten such an overwhelming amount of recognition. I knew there had to be something I was missing.
So he didn’t just save her life, he saved her quality of life as well.
If our nation can’t listen to him on gun safety, they can’t fucking listen to anyone.
Yes. Of course the right wants Obama to support the “real hero” the person who was carrying a gun and almost blew away an innocent bystander who had grabbed the gun.
The really want it to be true that they will be heroes who blow away the bad guys when the reality is they would more likely cause more death.
They all fantasize about being Wyatt Earp. Little boys who never grew up.
There was a Pew poll conducted last summer that showed a wide gulf between races on gun control attitudes. Whites favored no gun restrictions by about 60 percent. Blacks favored gun control by the same amount, and Hispanic favored gun control by about 75 percent. I don’t know why, I just think it’s interesting.
Hernandez himself has said that he doesn’t consider himself a hero and feels uncomfortable being called one. I think his wishes should be respected.
“HIPAA rules” are regulations based on a statute. A new law relating to gun regulation, if it were ever to pass, can simply supersede the HIPAA statute and regulations with respect to guns. It would require careful drafting, but it’s not like enacting a statute that purports to supersede Constitutional rights (cf. Patriot Act, FISA, and other unconstitutional statutes).
Fair enough. So, are you saying a national database of mental illnesses sounds like a good idea to you? Every time an American citizen seeks treatment for, say, depression, and gets a diagnosis of mild depression, and gets a prescription of oh, I don’t know, 90 days of Paxil … that person goes into the database? Is that what we’re talking about here? Because HIPAA or no HIPAA, that just seems like a bad idea to me, even apart from the gun issue. It strikes me that such a DB could be abused for other purposes.