Political MoJo

Two weeks after Congress put an end to gun control legislation, the National Rifle Association declared victory in Houston at its annual national convention. In a speech, Wayne LaPierre extolled what he portrayed as a diverse crowd in attendance. But is the true source of the NRA's power grassroots or corporate? Mother Jones senior editor Mark Follman joined author Paul Barrett and former NRA lobbyist Richard Feldman on Al Jazeera's "Inside Story" to debate how the famously secretive and fact-challenged gun group operates. Watch:

Bonus video: Behold the Texas governor's entrance at this year's NRA convention, dubbed by one YouTube poster as "Rick Perry's super bad ass NRA gun intro video." Come for the rocking soundtrack, stay for Perry's manly removal of an assault rifle magazine:

Read our full special report on gun laws and the rise of mass shootings in America.

Mark Follman is a senior editor at Mother Jones. Read more of his stories and follow him on Twitter.

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A new study by leading pediatricians has found that nearly 20 percent of young people between the ages of 10 and 21 who are considered to be at risk for suicide have guns in their homes. The study is being presented Monday at the annual Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Washington, following a symposium held Saturday that also addressed youth gun suicides, media violence, and gun violence prevention.

For the study, 524 patients were surveyed using a standard suicide assessment screening: 17 percent of the 151 patients determined to be suicide risks said they lived in a home with guns; 31 percent said they knew how to access the guns, and the same number said they knew how to access ammunition; 15 percent said they could get their hands on both.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suicide is the third leading cause of death of people between the ages of 10 and 24. Among that age group, guns are the top method of suicide. Research elsewhere suggests that having access to guns increases the likelihood that suicidal people will actually kill themselves.

In 1996, the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied for an amendment to an appropriations bill that gutted the CDC's gun violence research budget. "None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control...may be used to advocate or promote gun control," the amendment read. Since its passage, the agency has been almost entirely absent from gun research, leaving such studies up to others. This January, President Obama announced plans to direct the CDC to resume studying the causes and prevention of gun violence.

Gun rights advocates and groups like the NRA have continued to argue that gun violence studies are politically motivated, and might build a case for greater gun control. After the Tucson shooting in 2011, for instance, NRA chief lobbyist Chris Cox told the New York Times, "Our concern is not with legitimate medical science. Our concern is they were promoting the idea that gun ownership was a disease that needed to be eradicated." Some have even argued that Obama's move to restart the research is illegal.

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On Monday morning, we published a story looking at what I called Ohio Gov. John Kasich's "remarkable renaissance." Two years ago, Kasich was Ohio's bête noire, one of the most unpopular governors in America. Today, his approval rating has rebounded to around 50 percent, his disapproval rating is in the low-30s, and he's faring better than his fellow governors in the Republican class of 2010.

All that being said, Kasich is still in a fragile place. A Monday story in the Columbus Dispatch says that Ohio tea partiers are so fed up with Kasich and the Republicans in the legislature that they're thinking about breaking away from the GOP and possibly forming a third party in time for the 2014 elections. Seth Morgan, policy director for the Ohio chapter of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity group, told the Dispatch that tea partiers' options range from "a third party, to an insurrection (within the Republican Party) and everything in between."

The Ohio tea party hit its boiling point when Tom Zawistowski, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, got trounced in his bid for the chairman's seat of the Ohio Republican Party. Zawistowski lost to Matt Borges, the party establishment's pick, by a 48-7 vote. After losing this proxy battle to lead the Ohio GOP, conservative leaders apparently decided they needed to break off and consider alternatives to the party.

Here's from the Dispatch:

After the chairmanship vote, Zawistowski said he made it clear that if the state GOP did not focus on enacting conservative policies, "we would either find a political party to join or we would start one of our own," saying his meeting with Shrader “is the first step in that process."

It remains uncertain, however, just how much the Ohio GOP and its candidates could be hurt by an insurrection because it is difficult to assess the true strength of tea party groups. A 2012 poll by the Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that about 28 percent of Republicans identified themselves as tea party supporters.

Although loosely organized in 2009 around ideals of fiscal conservatism and smaller government, the tea party largely has been fractionalized with no single acknowledged leader.

"There are potential splits within the tea party itself," said John Green, a University of Akron political scientist. "It's hard to judge how strong they are because their popularity fluctuates. It’s not a cohesive group, but it does have some resources and some talented people who are quite effective."

If the tea party "insurrection" turns out to be real, it is bad news for Kasich. A third party or GOP insurrection could divide the conservative base that Kasich needs to get reelected in 2014. He defeated Democrat Ted Strickland by just two percentage points in 2010—and that was when the tea party was at full strength. Today, as the Dispatch story makes clear, Kasich's relationship with hard-line conservatives is fragile, with tea partiers furious over his proposal to expand Medicaid using Obamacare dollars.

Whether conservatives can mount a serious third-party challenge in 2014 remains to be seen. But if they do, it's last thing Kasich needs.  

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Obaydullah, a detainee at Gitmo who was first captured in Afghanistan in 2002, filed a declaration in federal court in March that was unsealed and posted by the national security blog Lawfare on Friday. The declaration goes into striking detail about the circumstances that Obaydullah (who goes by one name) says provoked the hunger strike at the detention camp, which began in February and now involves 100 out of the 166 remaining detainees, according to the Pentagon's count.

"In response to the dehumanizing searches, the confiscation of our personal items, and the desecration of the holy Quran, I and the men at Camp 6 and some at Camp 5, waged a hunger strike on Feburary 6 2013," the declaration reads. "But our strike continues because conditions have gotten worse, not better, and there is no hope that we will ever leave here."

The declaration corroborates the descriptions of Gitmo defense attorneys who have said that although the hunger strike began as a response to what the detainees saw as desecration of their holy books, it has now grown into a protest of the Obama administration's policy of indefinite detention. According to Obaydullah, conditions had improved until the February "shake down" that he says provoked the strike. In response, Obaydullah says, the guards began to interrupt detainees' prayers and moved detainees to more restrictive conditions. Access to recreational facilities was limited and, according to Obaydullah, camp authorities deliberately began to lower the temperature in Camp 6 to the point of "freezing." "All of these actions showed me and the other prisoners that camp authorities were treating us the way we were treated in the years under President Bush," Obaydullah writes.

In his declaration, Obaydullah hints at what the detainees would require to end the three-month protest. "We plan to remain on strike until we are treated with dignity, the guards stop trying to enforce old rules, our prayer and religion are respected, and our Qurans are handled with the care and sanctity required."

Obaydullah has been challenging his detention for years with little success. Although he maintains he was never a fighter for Al Qaeda or the Taliban, a federal judge concluded in 2010 that the evidence against him "unmistakably supports the conclusion that it is more likely than not that petitioner Obaydullah was in fact a member of an al Qaeda bomb cell committed to the destruction of U.S. and Allied forces," and was therefore lawfully detainable.

"I am losing all hope because I have been imprisoned at Guantanamo for almost 11 years now and I still do not know my fate," Obaydullah concludes.

Here's the full declaration:

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