Guns in Kroger and the myth of the open-carry Old West

You never know what mortal dangers you might face at the Kroger pharmacy, so be packing!

This story from HuffPo gives me deja vu from February 2013, because gun nuts have chosen Kroger stores to carry their AR-15s into as a display of their "rights." My response then still applies:

Imagine being with your child or grandchild and seeing this guy walk into the Kroger or Walmart before you toting an AR-15. At that moment, I guarantee that you won't be thinking, "Hooray for the Second Amendment!" You'll immediately go into fight-or-flight mode, fearing for the life of your child. You might use your own gun, preemptively, if you have one, creating all kinds of deadly confusion.

You might dial 911 and precipitate a costly and dangerous emergency, or a standoff situation if the guy is itching for it. In any case, I guarantee that you wouldn't not feel terror, it's just human instinct.

This is the country that the NRA and GOP have given us. This is not the country of our grandparents; there's nothing "conservative" or traditionally American about a guy casually walking into a grocery store with a deadly weapon that can fire more than 120 rounds per minute.

On the flip side, I have a second protest against an open-carry society: ironically, it would dull the instincts of those who carry guns to protect themselves and put them in danger. I mean, if everybody's carrying a gun and there's nothing alarming about that anymore, then how much time would you have to react if one of those folks in the crowd decides to point and shoot you? A second, maybe. Whereas if you see a guy with a gun today, in most cases, you're either immediately running away, calling the police or getting ready to defend yourself.  

That's why even in the Old West, where today we imagine everybody and his granny was packing, in fact many towns practiced gun control, for example in famous Dodge City, as my man Leonard Pitts recently pointed out: "Forget that myth about open carry’s Old West roots."

Kroger Under Fire From Gun-Control Moms

By Ben Hallman

August 18, 2014 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/1Arb9Ly

Real gun issue is mental health, not the NRA?

[Sigh] Yes, well:

If a family member, law enforcement officer or mental health professional is concerned about the well-being of an individual, they should be able to have that individual held for a mental health evaluation.

And what if somebody is just posting anti-government screeds on forums or You Tube, is that good enough? As if that weren't difficult enough judgment call to make for a third party to make, wait, says Robbins:

But connecting the dots [with mental health records] won't help unless every gun sale is subject to an instant background check imposed on all licensed gun retailers.

Well, gee, the NRA is the #1 opponent of universal, instant background checks, citing the red herring of "insufficient funding" for the National Instant Criminal Background Checks System (NICS), so this whole idea is dead in the water and we're back to square one: we can't do mental health checks; nor can we do universal background checks.

If the NRA really wanted the NICS to be funded then it would be 100% funded in a heartbeat; anybody who thinks otherwise is naive or a partisan hack.

The real gun problem is mental health, not the NRA

By Mel Robbins

June 24, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/24/opinion/robbins-mental-health/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Frum: Why NRA wins while other conservatives lose

A more illiberal and un-PC person than myself might summarize Frum's arguments thusly: the NRA speaks to the racial prejudices and economic insecurities of conservative rednecks.

Well, duh.

Why Gun-Rights Backers Win While Other Conservative Causes Lose

By David Frum

April 29, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/04/why-gun-rights-supporters-win-when-other-conservative-causes-lose/361396/

Bloomberg is taking on the NRA

Ninety percent of Americans and more than 80 percent of gun owners believe in universal background checks to buy a gun, says Bloomberg... yet so far, that's still not enough to persuade Republican legislators.

That's why Bloomberg is willing to spend at least $50 million to take on the NRA and change lawmakers' minds.

We will fight the NRA with common sense

By Michael Bloomberg and Shannon Watts

April 17, 2014 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/17/opinion/bloomberg-watts-gun-control-initiative/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Sandy Hook anniversary and America's gun sickness

Whenever FOX needs somebody to say why gun control is bad, they call on John Lott.

Here Lott is gloating that stricter gun control hasn't come to pass one year since the Newtown massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary where 26 people were shot and killed, including 20 children ages 6-7, most of them left beyond recognition even by their parents. Here is the website created by the 26 families in their memory.

As I've described before in meticulous detail, when it comes to gun violence, Lott bends and twists the truth. For instance this: "But gun control advocates aren’t giving up. They are patient, and they have money."

They are spending more money lately, but gun control advocates are still being outspent 13 to 1 by gun rights groups.

Sure, Lott can gloat about even more lax gun control laws passed since Sandy Hook in Red States such as Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota and Kansas, while only a few states such as New York and Delaware passed even more strict gun control laws. 

But he can't simply lie that a clear majority of Americans opposes gun control. Over the past 10 years, the share of Americans favoring stricter gun laws has fluctuated between 44 and 60 percent, with the most recent Gallup figure at 49 percent in favor, 37 percent for the status quo, and 13 percent for even less strict gun laws.  

So, about half of Americans have a sickness that's killing all of us, and they need an intervention. Indeed, since 9/11, about 364,000 Americans were killed by firearms. That's more Americans than died in combat in the Civil War. 

The truth is though, fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to own guns. So how are gun makers' profits at an all-time high since Sandy Hook? Easy. They use the NRA to scare fewer people into buying more and more guns to "defend" themselves against tyrannical Big Government and hordes of non-existent criminals (usually in the guise of minorities). 

It's a sickening paradox, but gun rampages like Sandy Hook are good for gun makers, because as soon as politicians make a peep about sensible measures afterwards like universal background checks, the NRA's fear machine cranks into high gear -- "They're coming to take your guns away!" -- Red States make pre-emptive attacks on existing gun laws, and sales to gun nuts go through the roof again.

1 year after Newtown, support for stricter gun control has disappeared

By John Lott

December 13, 2013 | FoxNews

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/12/13/1-year-after-newtown-support-for-stricter-gun-control-has-disappeared/?intcmp=HPBucket

Perverse states' reaction to Sandy Hook

It's sickening to think that the real result of the Sandy Hook gun rampage -- a shooting spree that killed eight boys and twelve girls, between six and seven years of age -- was even more lax gun control laws in more states, including: Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota and Kansas.

The faces of those shot and killed in Sandy Hook. The price of liberty?

Of course, you won't hear that in the U.S. lib'rul media.  You can only see that in a British newspaper.

If you live in one of the above-mentioned states, you're living among the crazies.  Are you one of the psychos, or somebody who knows the cure?

If you're one of the gun nuts, then none of the insane statistics cited below will matter to you, because no amount of dead children can equal the price of your "freedom" to bear assault-type weapons and semi-automatic handguns with big clips and avoid a criminal background check.

Defenseless little kids shot up at school.  Just as Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and the rest of our Founding Fathers imagined it.  Right.

UPDATE (09.12.2013):  In reply to this post, one of my GOP friends gave me one of the gun nuts' fallback arguments: alcohol kills more people than guns, so unless the Left is serious about banning alcohol, they don't have a right to talk about regulating firearms. 

(Nor should we spend $ billions on missions to Mars while children are starving in Africa, I suppose.)

So I sighed and reminded him that guns have no positive benefits, unlike alcohol. (Two exceptions: law enforcement and hunting; but hunters can pass background checks and they don't need banana clips to kill deer).  You can't shoot yourself or others in moderation. 

Besides, we regulate alcohol purchase and consumption myriad ways, and ban it for citizens under 21. A kid can legally own a rifle but not drink. It's a crime to buy a kid a beer but buying him a handgun is fine. You can't bring beer to a public school or library but you can take a gun. You can't drive while drinking but you can drive with a gun. We have public health campaigns against alcoholism, yet doctors and public health officials must remain silent about the dangers of guns. The state can take your kids away if you're an alcoholic, but not if you keep guns lying around the house. And we impose sin tax on alcohol ... but trying imposing a tax on ammunition!  The gun nuts would explode.

Yes, besides alcohol there are a few things that kill more people every year in America than guns: automobiles, prescription drugs.... Would the gun nuts have us outlaw pharmacies before we can have a reasonable conversation about regulating firearms?

Guns and kids: the youngest casualties of America's infatuation with firearms

By Ana Marie Cox

September 10, 2013 | Guardian

The cover of the recent Children's Defense Fund report (pdf) on gun violence in the United States carries a single statistic:

The number of children and teens killed by guns in one year would fill 134 classrooms of 20 students each.

That's just a more dramatic way of stating an already staggering figure – 2,694 in 2010. Most of the report's 73 following pages are devoted to restating it. Sometimes, this done to illustrate the chilling frequency of such deaths:

• One child or teen died every 3 hours and 15 minutes

• Seven children and teens died every day, more than 20 every three days

• Fifty-one children and teens died every week

Other times, the same set of statistics (all from the Centers for Disease Control) is used to drive home the magnitude of the tragedy, relating it to the kinds of violence we think we understand:

Nearly three times more children and teens were injured by guns in 2010 than the number of US soldiers wounded in action that year in the war in Afghanistan; 82 children under five died from guns in 2010, compared to 55 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.

And then, there's the shameful comparison to other countries:

US children and teens are 17 times more likely to die from a gun than their peers in 25 other high-income countries combined.

Put it slightly differently:

US children and teens made up 43% of all children and teens in these 26 countries but were 93% of all children and teens killed by guns.

The report is an exercise in word problem reformatting, a hideous nightmare of a standardized test in which every answer is both "all of the above" and wrong. We have failed. The numbers in the examples change, but the fact they illustrate is big and ugly and refuses cosmetic adjustment: the United States, despite a meekly gratifying downward trend, continues to kill its young people with guns at rate more in line with war-torn nations than the prosperous, peaceful countries we presume to lead. In a different, but equally upsetting report, the World Health Organization observed (pdf):

With the notable exception of the United States, most countries with youth homicide rates above 10 per 100,000 are either developing countries or countries caught up in the turmoil of social and economic change.

The repetitiveness of the statistics reflects desperation, I think. One can picture the authors' frantic oneupmanship in coming up with ways to make the truth as vivid as possible: compare it to war! Compare it to Sandy Hook! And, of course, show us the victims – not via pictures of the violence itself, thank God, but in descriptions of who they were: post-Sandy Hook stories salt the wound:

Steven Curtis, 12, dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head with his father's gun. Caroline Sparks, 2, shot in the chest and killed by her five-year-old brother. Tayloni Mazyck, 11, caught in gang crossfire and paralyzed for life. The list goes unrelentingly on. (As of July, the New York Daily News found 120 children had been killed by gunfire since Sandy Hook; they relied only on news reports, not CDC surveys. The end number will be undoubtedly, horrifyingly larger.)

The report wallops us over the head with statistics because its authors can't reach through the pages and throttle us. The frustration is as understandable as it is evident, for as gruesome as the statistics about violence are, the recounting of what legislation has and has not passed is even more dispiriting. Over and over, the public's willingness (even eagerness) to tighten gun laws has been outmatched by the cowardice of politicians in mysterious thrall to the National Rifle Association.

The whimpering death of the Toomey-Manchin bill has been examined at length; the CDF notes further that, beyond the Senate voting against regulations, a majority of Americans were for (assault weapons ban, background checks):

Several proposals to weaken existing gun violence prevention measures received more 'Yes' votes than the background checks provision. They included a concealed-carry reciprocity proposal and a provision to prevent veterans who are mentally incapacitated from losing their right to own a gun without a court hearing.

The news gets worse as we get closer to home, where state legislatures reacted to Sandy Hook primarily by widening access to firearms andweakening regulation. You read that right: more states passed pro-gun legislation in the wake of Sandy Hook than there were states that passed stricter gun control. Maryland, Connecticut and New York and New Jersey all tightened gun laws; Utah, Virginia, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Carolina, Indiana, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Kansas all somehow relaxed their gun laws – by extending the number of places one can carry a concealed weapon, by allowing guns in schools, by instituting "stand your ground" laws, or adding the right to own a firearm to the state constitution.

Colorado reigned in some gun rights after the Aurora massacre in July 2012; today, it is at the center of an NRA-sponsored recall, to be decided this week. Another state legislature, Missouri, both liberalized conceal carry and took unprecedented step of nullifying all federal gun laws – outlawing the federal government from enforcing its gun restrictions within the state. The bill was passed and then vetoed. This week, the legislature will meet in a special session to override the veto.

The Missouri proposal goes beyond the kind of passive quasi-civil disobedience of, say, medical marijuana laws, or even those rebellious legislatures that have sought to nullify Obamacare. The Missouri law would punish federal enforcement of legally enacted statutes by setting criminal penalties for federal agents, and prohibiting state officials from co-operating with federal efforts.

This is insanity.

Conservatives and liberals alike can use the tragedy of children's deaths as evidence of the need for their favored policies. After all, gun rights advocates want more guns in schools, they argue, for the greater safety of the children. They might even deny the relevance of concealed-carry laws and stand-your-ground provisions to the issue at hand. What does banning raids from the federal government's "jackbooted thugs" (in NRA president Wayne LaPierre's famous formulation) have to do with those classrooms full of dead kids?

There is only a shuddering half-step between between the general availability of firearms, their lax regulation, and the death of children. States with background checks have 16% lower gun fatality rates.  Child access prevention laws reduce accidental shootings by as much as 23%. Australia passed a strict assault weapons ban and mandatory buy-back program (the US law once on the books had no such program) in 1996 – and hasn't had a single mass shooting since.

I'm not even sure the CDF believed this report would change that many minds: to anyone disinclined to believe that strict gun laws work, the report is just a recitation of bad things happening because of bad guys (even if a lot of those "bad guys" are other children). Perhaps the point of the report was more modest: just to let people know what is happening, what violence is going on beneath surface, as politicians and lobbyists posture. Though, who knows: Missouri has the fourth most gun deaths in the nation, the sixth most deaths by firearm for children under 18 and is a favorite transit point for gun-traffickers (in a July raid that may be deemed illegal next week, federal agents seized 267 illegal weapons) and look what's happening there.

We're beyond the point of "what will it take" when it comes to sane gun laws. The tragedies that should spur protests and marches and petitions happen quietly every day.

This is how the NRA will lose

No more Mr. (and Ms.) Nice Liberal, that's the moral of the story.  

Mixing "angry" + "moms" + "millions" is a formula guaranteed to scare the s**t out of Congress.

Now liberals and Congressmen are realizing that "the absolute power of the NRA is one of the oldest and least-tested assumptions in Washington."

Complementing millions of angry grassroots activists, Bloomberg and Giffords are ready to spend $ millions to oust Democrats who voted against background checks; they're going to single-issue Democrats first, Republicans second, the same way the NRA does.

There may just be hope for change!

This Is How The NRA Ends

By Alec MacGillis

May 28, 2013 | New Republic

URL: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113292/nras-end-real-gun-control-movement-has-arrived#

NRA and the next Civil War

[Sigh].  I debated with myself whether to comment on the first speech of new NRA President and Alabama good old boy Jim Porter.

I mean, he's obviously following the new NRA playbook which is to sound as inflammatory as possible, scare as many gun owners as possible, in order to sell as many expensive, militarized firearms as possible to a shrinking pool of gun-owning households.

But Big Jim went over the top.  He flirted with Birtherism.  He sided with Iran, N. Korea and Syria in opposing the UN small arms treaty that concerns arms dealers, not citizens.  But worst of all, he brought up the Civil War.  That tore it.

Sure, give a crusty old Alabaman a mic and a national audience and he's going to mention either Bear Bryant or the Civil War. I get it.

But he told a bald lie: that "down South," they call the Civil War the "War of Northern Aggression."  I'm from the South, I lived 4 years in Alabama, and I never heard anybody call it that, not even a so-called Professor of Southern Studies.  

But even worse was his obvious implication: that another Civil War is coming. Between North and South, or Blue and Red states, or urban and rural counties, or a disappearing white majority and everybody else.  It's being fought on all those fronts and more.

This is indeed where we're headed, folks.  And remember, 29 percent of Americans think armed insurrection against our government may be necessary.

Understand, I'm not terribly worried about real armed rebellion, although enough violent kooks will take matters into their own hands.  No, such polls are a testament to the violence being committed against our political culture, our sense of national unity.  Our nation is being torn apart, politically, and increasingly, culturally.  It was already divided economically and ethnically.    

What's going to hold us all together?  What do we all agree on anymore?  How are we going to solve our real problems, like persistent unemployment (especially youth unemployment), ballooning student debt, caring for our elderly, addressing the rising cost of health care and education, wrapping up two disastrous wars, and having a long-term plan for our budget and national debt?  And when will we ever have a chance to talk about all this without killing each other?

Partly, I think it's the media's fault; they've been divided for a long time, because sensation and shouting is better for their ratings.  The media, especially cable news and talk radio, spend hours a day trying to get us all riled up about stupid shit like birth certificates so that there's no time left to talk about substance.  It's a distraction technique, it creates an addiction to anger and a belief in quick, easy answers, and it works terribly well.  That's why I was hesitant to even comment on Jim Porter's buffoonish remarks that were meant to divide us.

But it's also our fault.  Or mostly our fault.  Yes, ordinary Americans.  When there is no occasion or need for liberals, conservatives and independent to talk to each other anymore, then rigid stereotypes and political caricatures replace "the other guy," the cable-radio echo chamber replaces citizens' dialog and debate, and civility breaks down.  

When I'm at home in the South, which isn't often these days, and politics comes up at a gathering of polite semi-strangers, (for me, that's usually in a bar), at the first opportunity I tell the other guys, usually Republicans, "I have to admit, I'm a big lefty liberal and I voted for Obama twice."  After they get over the shock of my admitting that so openly on "enemy" territory, with a smile on my face, the conversation usually goes pretty well.  Nobody has yet spit on the ground and walked away.  

We usually end up agreeing we share most of the same values, like the importance of family, hard work, liberty, tolerance and neighborliness... as well as taking care of our weak and unfortunate brothers and sisters.  

What we certainly disagree about is how our common values should be expressed in terms of government policy.  But it makes for an entirely different and more productive conversation when we seek to define common ground, and don't start the discussion with "liberals hate America," or "conservatives are Nazis."  

The point is that it's OK to be partisan, it's OK to have strong opinions, as long as we're honest, forthright, fair and we listen.  That's the essence of civility.  We used to have that in America.  I hope we haven't lost it, myself included.

Meet Your New NRA President-A Man Still Fighting The Civil War From The Losing Side

By Rick Ungar

May 3, 2013 | Forbes

URL: http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/05/03/meet-your-new-nra-president-a-man-still-fighting-the-civil-war-from-the-losing-side/

Bloomberg is the best we've got in a bad situation

This is what America needs right now, unfortunately: a rich counterbalance to the NRA's 4 million members and, more importantly, the gun & ammo manufacturers that bankroll the NRA, and hence Congressional election campaigns.

Don't like it?  Then fix Congressional campaign finance laws, you dumb "money equals speech" Republicans!

If the American people, and even NRA members, had their way, we'd have universal background checks already.

In the meantime, since the voice of the American people and NRA members means squat, thank goodness for super-rich Mayor Bloomberg who is willing to pour his millions into doing the right thing.

Bloomberg Aims His Money At Gun Control Opponents 

By Ailsa Chang

April 27, 2013 | NRP

URL: http://n.pr/10ipPb1

Duck and cover...and block and charge and flee

Remember when schools used to have only fire drills? Maybe tornado drills?  Ah, the good ole' days.

Now teachers and students train to flee a shooting spree, defend themselves with ballistic chalk boards (no joke), or even charge attackers as a desperate last resort. Meanwhile, kids walk to school with bullet-proof backpacks made extra-long to cover more of their little bodies.

They say necessity is the mother of invention.  Thanks, NRA, for making all this necessary!

UPDATE (05.05.2013): NPR is a little slower than me; here is an article about the same thing, and how these offensive-defensive measures are basically a scam by companies looking to get education grant money: "Bulletproof Whiteboards And The Marketing Of School Safety."

US schools weigh bulletproof uniforms: 'It's no different than a seatbelt in a car'

By Dan Roberts

April 26, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3fdmd

Beer baron cancels NRA membership in protest

You can read Busch's letter to the NRA here.  Good for him!  Let's hope more responsible hunters and gun owners have the courage to follow suit, and abide the wishes of 90 percent of Americans and 74 percent of NRA members, instead of the cabal of gun & ammo manufacturers who own the NRA.

Adolphus Busch IV resigns NRA membership

By Leisa Zigman

April 18, 2013 | KSDK.com

URL: http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/376098/3/KSDK-Exclusive-Adolphus-Busch-IV-resigns-NRA-membership-

Michael Moore: America, don't look away

Warning: if you have young children or grandchildren these forensic descriptions could literally bring you to tears. But I encourage you to read it anyway. This is fact. This is the country we've made for ourselves over the past 30 years.

America, You Must Not Look Away

By Michael Moore

March 13, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/newtown-gun-control_b_2866126.html

America's dying gun culture

Consider these firearms stats, courtesy of Mary Sanchez:

In 1977, 54 percent of American households reported owning guns. In 2010, the last time the General Social Survey data was compiled, the percentage had shrunk to 32.

Gun manufacturing increased dramatically between 2007 and 2011, from 3.7 million weapons to 6.1 million being produced.

And here is Sanchez's (nearly) correct conclusion from these stats:

A declining proportion of the American public is getting involved in gun culture — that is, the gun industry’s customer base is not growing — and yet business is booming. This should lead us to an alarming conclusion. The marketing of more lethal forms of weaponry and ammunition is how the gun industry has decided to shore up profits. The fierce resistance to bans on assault weapons and large ammo clips, as well as to background checks and any other hurdle put in the way of those who want to arm themselves, is not about defending the Second Amendment. It is about defending a business model — a sick, cynical business model.

I admit it, I didn't catch on right away. For many years I thought that the NRA was run by a bunch of loons. But the NRA is crazy like a fox: it knows threats of government gun bans, gun registries, and gun confiscation are the best stimulus for selling more guns. And most of the NRA's financial contributions come directly from gun & ammo manufacturers, not from the NRA's 3.1 million members. 

So, with fewer gun owners, the only way to increase sales is through fear and hysteria. That's what the gun industry needs, so that's what the NRA provides.

UPDATE (03.24.2013): McClatchy came out with more commentary on America's shrinking gun culture based on statistics from the same General Social Survey conducted every two years by the University of Chicago: "Surprising results from gun survey."

More guns but fewer gun owners in America

By Mary Sanchez

March 1, 2013 | Kansas City Star

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/01/184074/commentary-more-guns-but-fewer.html

FOX: Could there be a 'Second American Revolution'?

Great journalism!  Fair & Balanced!  (A pro-gun host, an NRA lawyer, and a pro-gun sheriff who threatens violent revolution.)  Nope, no pandering to the NRA at all, just tough, smart reporting.  And anyway, treating what-ifs as if they were real news is is not nearly as dangerous as some kids playing video games in their basements, no sir.

Seriously though, it is totally irresponsible of FOX to debate hypothetical scenarios (government confiscating guns, or a government gun registry) that nobody in government including Obama has proposed, and to scare gun owners and encourage crazies to go over the edge.  

Then again, beating the crazy conservative hornets nest with a rhetorical stick just to see what happens next is what FOX does best.

Second American Revolution on the horizon?

February 24, 2013 | FOXNews

URL: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2186710402001/second-american-revolution-on-the-horizon/?intcmp=obnetwork

Ames: Christopher Dorner: Man, myth, murderer

Ames is right, people tend to see in Christopher Dorner what they want to see.  

But the fact that the LAPD is corrupt and racist is undeniable, and it's wrongful terminations were out of control: 

Los Angeles police brought an average of three times more lawsuits a year per officer than officers in Chicago and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Finally, Christopher Dorner did not give off any signs of mental illness until he "snapped," which is quite normal for rampage shooters, exposing, once again, the stinking red herring of the NRA and pro-gun conservatives that somehow mental health checks will prevent shooting rampages.

Wrongful Termination: Chris Dorner's Terrifyingly Banal Killing Spree

By Mark Ames

February 20, 2013 | NSFW Corp

URL: https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/chris-dorner-wrongful-termination

Locke, Hobbes and history v. Gun nuts

Paul Rosenberg is absolutely right in his philosophical argument that lasting liberty is incompatible with individual gun ownership; but he spends most of his time refuting the less deeply held belief of the pro-gun crowd: that freedom-loving individuals need guns for their own security.  

Rather, the gun nuts' main argument against reasonable gun control is that we the people need more and deadlier guns to overthrow our government if it ever becomes tyrannical.  

This is a bad and eristic argument in favor of individuals' unrestricted access to all types of deadly guns. Yet it's difficult to refute using purely inductive logic because something similar has never happened -- especially in the most powerful country in the history of the world with a military of 3 million and all the wizz-bang futuristic weapons you can think of.  For argument's sake, such a nation has never gone from democratic to tyrannical and tried to oppress its own people.

And so we liberals can only make reasonable, rational arguments to the effect that we the people wouldn't stand much of a chance fighting such an evil government. And in the meantime, 30,000 gun deaths a year (including 9,000 gun murders) is a high price to pay for the "freedom" to defend ourselves in such an unlikely what-if scenario. (I actually think flesh-eating zombies taking over is more likely, but that's just me....)

What's more, as I told my Uncle T. (who subscribes to this argument) over Christmas, if the United States government ever did become so murderous and tyrannical, then it would mean there were at least 1,000 lapses in our democratic vigilance leading up that moment that had nothing to do with our weapons or guns. It would mean we the people largely had ourselves to blame for it. *

Apropos, Rosenberg points out that John Locke and the Founding Fathers had no idea how important peaceful protest would become in securing the freedom and civil rights of so many millions of people, starting about 160 years later.  (That's yet another thing they never imagined, in addition to AR-15 semi-automatic rifles in the hands of madmen....). 

And so despite the Founding Fathers' lack of prescience...

... that doesn't mean that Locke's underlying logic has died. To the contrary, the issue of the consent of the governed has never been more alive than it has been in the last few decades. But what's most interesting is that it's taken such a strong turn toward non-violent, unarmed revolution, seen most recently in the peaceful successes of the Arab Spring. Of course these did not succeed everywhere, and violent struggle emerged in several countries, yet it should be remembered that nothing remotely like this was even conceivable at the time that Locke wrote. And yet, the underlying thrust of his logic has been supremely vindicated by the non-violent lineage of Thoreau, Gandhi, King and Mandela - a lineage that stands directly opposite to the gun-crazed vision of the NRA. [Emphasis mine - J]

What I should have added to Uncle T. was that, as Mark Ames recently pointed out, gun ownership actually decreases our democratic vigilance since guns give far too many Americans an unearned sense of complacency, or a sense that the mere act of owning firearms is a "rebellious" thing in and of itself... and meanwhile they sit at home on their couches while the plutocrats corrupt our government and screw the Average Joe's of the country who "cling to their guns and religion," instead of those gun owners being politically active. (And no, being an NRA member does not make somebody politically active.)

... (Sigh) But these are all reasonable things to say to unreasonable people. That's why I'm mostly preaching to the pro-gun control choir here.

* And I added to Uncle T. the unoriginal thought that a better defense of our liberty against government tyranny than the 2nd Amendment is our professional, all-volunteer military and the esprit de corps instilled in our troops who vow to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution. It's one thing for them to shoot armed baddies overseas; but it's quite another thing for them to obey orders to shoot and kill their fellow citizens at home, armed and unarmed alike. To defend their countrymen is the exact reason most of them sign up in the first place!  And so, this argument in favor of the unrestricted right to bear arms is quite insulting to our U.S. servicemen and women.

Locke and unload: Why the NRA doesn't understand rights

It's the exact inability of guns to secure our freedom that establishes the foundation for our civil government.

By Paul Rosenberg

December 27, 2012 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121226104857715225.html

Left & Right agree: NRA is calling for a police state

It's not often that lefty liberals and far-right libertarians agree -- and in opposition to the NRA, no less!  

Robert Parry sees even farther than Ron Paul: he asks if armed police are what's needed in our schools to "meet a gun with a gun," then why stop there, why not put federally funded police in shopping malls, toll booths, you name it?

NRA Suggests a Police State

By Robert Parry

December 23, 2012 |  Consortium News

URL: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/23/nra-suggests-a-police-state/

Ron Paul rips NRA plan for officers in every school

December 24, 2012 | FoxNews

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/12/24/ron-paul-rips-nra-plan-for-officers-in-every-school/

Ames: Big backers of 'gun-nuttery' have ulterior aims

As usual, Mark Ames has a unique take on events, usually describing how Big Business tries to dumb us down, rile us up, or lull us to sleep at the right moments. He sees the NRA and the larger "gun cult batshittery" as another example, and it's not about guns:

[I]t’s now so deeply ingrained that owning guns is a form of radical subversive politics, the people who still engage in real politics have the pick of the litter. That first became really clear in the depths of the 2008-9 collapse, when a lot of people who thought of themselves as radicals and anarchists made a lot of feckless noise about how they were arming and preparing for the collapse and revolution. They could’ve gone out and organized something and maybe built a politics of people power or even a politics of what they call revolution, a politics that actually changed things. But instead, they locked themselves in their homes and apartments with their guns and fancied themselves political revolutionaries just waiting to be swept up. But no one came. No one bothered or cared. And really, why would any plutocrat or evil government agency bother with the suckers, all harmlessly atomized and isolated and thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that their guns gave them, while you do the real work of plundering budgets, bribing politicians and writing laws even more in your favor?

So while everyone was hiding out in their homes armed and ready for Hollywood finales that never came, in the real world political power was concentrating at warp-speed with zero resistance.

From the oligarchy’s perspective, the people were thoroughly neutralized by the false sense of political empowerment that guns gave them. Guns don’t work in this country — they didn’t work for the Black Panthers or the Whiskey Rebellion, and they won’t work for you or me either.

It takes years to cultivate a political mindset that voluntarily neutralizes itself by convincing itself that its contribution to world revolution comes down to purchasing a few guns at K-Mart, then blogging about it. That’s what reactionary plutocrats like the Koch brothers understood about the deeper politics of gun fanaticism, and why their outfits like the Cato Institute have been at the forefront of overturning gun regulations and promoting "Stand Your Ground" vigilantism as a substitute for political engagement: That by poisoning the political climate, it poisons the minds, which circulates back to the external environment, and back into the minds, until you lock the culture into a pattern in which you always get more and they always get fleeced, which makes them more fanatical and you more powerful...

This is what I missed or ignored about gun control: The longterm view that the Koch brothers and the Scaifes and everyone backing gun-nuttery understood about how gun laws or the absence of those laws can completely transform the surrounding political climate.

From "Opeation Wetback" To Newtown: Tracing The Hick Fascicm Of The NRA

By Mark Ames

December 17, 2012 | NSFW CORP

URL: http://nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/newtown

Legal WMD that we love and die to keep

Focusing on mental health or our "culture" in an attempt to stop more shooting rampages is a red herring meant to distract us. (And if you want to give all America's mentally ill proper medical care -- support Obamacare or shut up about it.)  Writes WaPo's Caputo:

Since the Newtown, Conn., massacre, there has been a good deal of vague chatter suggesting that people like Purdy or Lanza or Jared Loughner can be identified before they act on their monstrous fantasies and can be prohibited from purchasing firearms. A kind of early-warning radar will detect a disturbed personality on a trajectory toward slaughter.

How would this be accomplished? Are disgruntled workers, loners or anyone who says or does bizarre things going to be examined by psychiatric boards? If it’s determined that they are potential dangers to themselves or others, would they be placed on some sort of national watch list? Compelled to undergo treatment? Locked up?

Even if such a system had been in place, it would not have stopped Lanza, who, as we all know, obtained his weapons by stealing them from the collection of his gun-enthusiast mother.

Again, it comes back to the guns themselves. And no, more guns or armed security guards in our 100,000 schools (as the NRA lamely suggests) are not the answer: recall that an armed security guard traded shots with Klebold and Harris before they shot and killed 13 people and shot and wounded 24 others at Columbine High School in 1999. The school security guard's main safety contribution that day was calling in local police. 

But what’s more wrong are the guns themselves. A 9 mm semiautomatic handgun with a 30-round clip isn’t a pistol; it’s a weapon of mass destruction. Jared Loughner proved that by killing six people and wounding 13 others in not much more time than it took you to read this sentence.

Today, tens of millions of such firearms are in circulation in the United States. If it were up to me, they would be regulated as strictly as fully automatic weapons, such as machine guns, have been for decades. All citizens, except those with federal firearms licenses, would be required to surrender them to law enforcement authorities (with fair compensation). And then I’d destroy them.

But sensible gun buy-back like what happened in Australia won't ever be attempted in the U.S. Why? It's our dirty little open secret. We all know that the backwards Red States would be in uproar, especially the South. There would be individual and organized acts of terrorism. Officially, some states might seek to secede.  And all this to defend the right of Americans to commit the equivalent of three September 11th attacks against each other every year!

Blame the killing machines: guns

By Philip Caputo

December 21, 2012 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/WCkP5r

Gun industry profits from NRA's calculated hysterics

Firearms industry employment is up 31 percent since 2008.  From 2007 to 2011, U.S. firearms production grew 63 percent, led by handguns, up 104 percent. Gun & ammo producers Winchester, Remington and Sturm, Ruger have seen all-time highs in profits since Obama was elected.

What's going on?

As Remington's then-CEO, Ted Torbeck, said in a 2009 conference call with investors, "demand…has risen amidst concerns that the new administration will further restrict the use or purchase of firearms and ammunition and levy additional taxes on these products."

And who increases those concerns to stoke demand?  The NRA.  Which gets more money from the gun lobby and members the more guns are sold.  Even though President Obama hasn't done anything to control the sale of deadly firearms during his tenure, "the NRA's rhetoric reached a fever pitch this spring and summer, with the association warning in a fundraising letter that a second term for Obama would give him 'free rein to declare all-out war on our gun rights and rip the Second Amendment right out of our Bill of Rights.'"

Indeed, the gun industry faces an ever-present threat to its profits, but not from Obama or Democrats:  

A gun that's taken care of should last a lifetime. Such a durable product can be a problem for the industry that makes it. That's why it's crucial not only to attract new customers, but to get gun owners to buy multiple guns. And that's where the twin fears of crime and confiscation—hyped by America's massive gun marketing complex—come in.

The gun industry needs political enemies and scare tactics to keep people buying multiple guns and hoards of ammo that they don't need.  So it looks like, ironically, Democrats are their best friends.

How the Gun Industry Made a Fortune Stoking Fears That Obama Would Take People's Guns & Ammo Away

There is no divorcing the politics of guns from their profits.

By Jarrett Murhpy

August 30, 2012 | AlterNet

URL:  http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/how-gun-industry-made-fortune-stoking-fears-obama-would-take-peoples-guns-ammo?paging=off