And the states with most gun violence are...

... Surprise, surprise: the pro-gun states.

This fact is nothing new but the right-wing media would lie and tell you the exact opposite. Moreover, the most violent gun states are all Red States. Finally, the most violent gun states are also among the poorest -- but if you read me often then you already know there's a strong correlation between poverty and Red States:

Gun-related homicide rates in all but three of the 10 states with the most firearm death rates were above the national rate of 3.6 homicides per 100,000 residents. Louisiana, the only state on this list where homicide accounted for more gun-related deaths than suicides, reported 9.4 homicides per 100,000 residents in 2011, more than in any other state.

So here are the top 10 most violent gun states:

10. South Carolina  (also 9th poorest state)

9.   New Mexico  (2nd poorest state)

8.   Alabama  (7th poorest state)

7.   Arkansas  (4th poorest state)

6.   Montana

5.   Oklahoma  (15th poorest state)

4.   Wyoming  

3.   Alaska

2.   Mississippi  (the poorest U.S. state)

1.   Louisiana  (3rd poorest state)

So Fox and talk radio would like to sell you the lie that guns are only a problem in inner cities like Chicago, DC, New York and LA, when in fact the most gun violence happens in less populated, more rural, poorer, conservative Red States.  (We can just say "Red States" for short.)  

States With the Most Gun Violence

By Thomas C. Frohlich

June 26, 2014 | 24/7 Wall St.

URL: http://247wallst.com/special-report/2014/06/26/231958/#ixzz36E7LfGFd

Right-wing rhetoric partly to blame for shooting sprees

Kudos to Paul Waldman for telling it like it is: relentless, crazy right-wing rhetoric is indeed responsible for stirring some disturbed gun nuts to go on shooting sprees [italics and emphasis mine]:

But the argument that no sane person could actually believe many of the things conservatives say shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility. When you broadcast every day that the government of the world’s oldest democracy is a totalitarian beast bent on turning America into a prison of oppression and fear, when you glorify lawbreakers like Cliven Bundy, when you say that your opponents would literally destroy the country if they could, you can’t profess surprise when some people decide that violence is the only means of forestalling the disaster you have warned them about.

To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

I would go even further than Waldman: conservatives spewing such radical rhetoric should not only not be surprised when some people take what they say literally to its "logical" conclusion; conservative radicals have no moral leg to stand on whatsoever. They don't even have the right to condemn these shooters, because they stand do not stand at a moral distance from these shooters like the rest of us do.

Alas, my satisfaction in being right on gun control is little consolation. Nothing is going to change because half of America is nuts about guns; and the shooting rampages will continue....

How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?

By Paul Waldman

June 9, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1n275d6

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/

Most U.S. shootings are by law-abiding citizens

Every criminal is a law-abiding citizen until he commits his first crime. Cox reminds us that the same is true of gun crime [emphasis mine]:

Among the 5,417 gun homicides in 2012 that the FBI assigns a circumstance to (3,438 are "unknown circumstances"), a mere 1,324 were committed in conjunction with another felony. Three times that (3,980) were committed by otherwise law-abiding citizens. Of that, over half (1,968) were the result of an argument that escalated fatally out of control.

To put it another way: otherwise unpremeditated murders, where people kill out of momentary rage, are the single most common type of gun homicide in America. More than gangland killings (822); more than murders committed during robberies (505) and drug deals (311) combined.

But, armed with these facts, Americans still won't do anything about it because we'd rather be armed, period.  We think we're the good guys, when we're really not. We're crazy about our little instruments of death.

A man was shot for texting at a movie. This isn't an anomaly in America

By Ana Marie Cox

January 16, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3yqn2

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

U.S. needs an intervention on guns

About half of America is insane about guns and the other half cannot cure their illness:

There have been fewer than 20 terror-related deaths on American soil since 9/11 and about 364,000 deaths caused by privately owned firearms. If any European nation had such a record and persisted in addressing only the first figure, while ignoring the second, you can bet your last pound that the State Department would be warning against travel to that country and no American would set foot in it without body armour.

In fact, if we take the entire history of U.S. warfare vs. the past 50 years of gun deaths, our national sickness looks even worse:

The figures from Congressional Research Service, plus recent statistics from icasualties.org, tell us that from the first casualties in the battle of Lexington to recent operations in Afghanistan, the toll is 1,171,177. By contrast, the number killed by firearms, including suicides, since 1968, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the FBI, is 1,384,171.

Porter believes it's time for the rest of the world to intervene and stop the bloodshed in America, since we Americans are mentally and physically incapable of ending it ourselves.

American gun use is out of control. Shouldn't the world intervene?

By Henry Porter

September 21, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3jxv3

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#

Give a kid crack, go to jail; give him a gun - OK!

I don't know what infuriates me more, these parents who gave their 5-year-old boy his own rifle, or his grandmother's reaction after he accidentally killed his baby sister with it:

It was God's will. It was her time to go, I guess I just know she's in heaven right now and I know she's in good hands with the Lord.

No, I think it' s because of terrible parents.  If they had given their son drugs they would be in jail now without child custody. But giving their son a deadly rifle that he kills his sister with?  That's just a terrible accident, say the police.  Time to forget and move on.

Man, our country is fffffff-ed up over guns.

5-year-old Kentucky boy fatally shoots 2-year-old sister

By Leigh Remizowski

May 2, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

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

Mass shootings increasing, esp. after RTC-CC laws

MJ has proven once and for all that good guys with guns don't stop bad guys with guns. Right-to-carry and concealed-carry laws haven't improved things, in fact, mass shootings have increased over the same period.

And don't forget to check out this amazing study by Mother Jones of all mass shootings over the past 30 years: "A Guide to Mass Shootings in America."  Some key takeaways:

• Most of the killers were white males;
• Most of the guns were obtained legally;
• One-third of the guns that killers used would have been outlawed by the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.

New Research Confirms Gun Rampages Are Rising—and Armed Civilians Don't Stop Them

By Mark Follman

April 11, 2013 | Mother Jones

URL: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/mass-shootings-rampages-rising-data

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-

The 'Duh' files: Gun laws link to fewer gun deaths

Although this study makes perfect sense and should be hailed as a sunray of common sense by anybody who acknowledges that more guns = more shootings, it is problematic in that it sets up this false dichotomy between states/cities with and without strict gun control.

The problem is that America is not the USSR or Red China: people and things may move freely and it's easy enough to buy a gun in a lax city/state and take it someplace else.  

There is also a chicken-egg issue that the study's authors acknowledge but don't attempt to sort out: states with lower rates of gun ownership have fewer gun fatalities; but it may be because gun control in those states is easier to pass because they have fewer guns to begin with, rather than gun-control laws leading to fewer guns in circulation. But like I said, it's a technical issue that only egghead liberals like me take notice of, and it should not obscure the ironclad, statistical truth that more guns lead to more gun deaths.

Now here are some selected stats from this study:

• States that have the most laws have a 42% decreased rate of firearm fatalities compared to those with the least laws; 

• States with the most gun laws saw a 40% reduction in firearm-related homicides and a 37% reduction in firearm-related suicides;

• From 2007 to 2010, 121,084 firearm fatalities occurred.

Think about that last stat, covering just four years.  That's the equivalent of 9/11 times 40, the Iraq war times 27, the Afghanistan war times 55, or Vietnam war times 2.  In just four years!  And that's considered "normal."  We don't even think about it, much less stick magnetic ribbons on our bumpers, organize celebrity concerts, or erect solemn memorials.  We accept preventable murders without psychological trauma or remorse.  Amazing.

Study links gun laws and lower gun mortality

By Tom Watkins

March 7, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/06/us/guns-laws-mortality/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Violent entertainment does not cause gun murders

Like I always say, reliance on statistics and empiricism is what separates liberals from conservatives:

The reality is that there is no evidence linking violent games to mass shootings. We tend to return to this particular element, and it's interesting to see how quickly people like to latch on to this noncorrelation as if it were truly meaningful. The notion that mass homicides are linked to violent media was debunked as far back as 2002 by the U.S. Secret Service, which found that school shooters didn't consume high levels of violent media. But as a society we tend to focus on video games because it's easy to do so. 

Yeah, and what about older adults who go on shooting sprees?

Curiously, no one seems interested in investigating the effects of media popular among the elderly. Our attention to video games in the cases of some shootings but not others is what psychologists call confirmation bias, and it creates the illusion of a correlation where there is none. It's worth asking ourselves why we keep returning to video games despite the lack of evidence to support its link to violence. 

People around the world play the same violent video games and watch the same violent Hollywood movies and TV shows, but they don't commit as many gun murders either in absolute terms, or per capita. Conservatives complain about the so-called lib'rul media, but seriously, what kind of media bias is it when there is no factual or statistical basis to prove the connection between gun murders and violent entertainment, yet it keeps on getting reported as fact? 

What I find especially galling is that die-hard gun rights supporters seem quite ready to restrict the 1st Amendment by limiting what people can watch or play in order to protect the 2nd Amendment from any restrictions. They like to pay lip service to freedom of expression -- "There is no 1st Amendment without the 2nd" -- but it seems they are quite willing to do without the 1st to keep the 2nd, if that's what it comes down to. 

Americans are nuts about firearms, period. No intellectual or moral contortion is too twisted for them to justify their unlimited access to deadly firearms that have no other purpose than to kill many people in seconds.  

Video games didn't cause Newtown rampage

By Christopher J. Ferguson

February 20, 2013 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/20/opinion/ferguson-adam-lanza/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7

Gun nuts defend Confederate, not U.S., Constitution

YES!  Finally somebody else had the balls to say it: 

Although nullification, secession and armed conflict are not exclusively Southern responses to Obama's gun safety agenda, they certainly are much stronger there than elsewhere and they reflect the historical reality that these same false constitutional doctrines helped pave the way to the Civil War - the only episode of mass treason in US history.  

Once you allow this simple historical fact to sink in, the whole notion of "constitutional conservatism" finally starts to make sense. You see, the constitution these folks are referring to is not the Constitution of the United States of America.  It's the constitution of the Confederate States of America, whose entire reason for existing was to preserve the institution of slavery, and the political power of the slave-owning elite. 

And that constitution, thankfully, has already been shot full of holes, in the bloodiest war in American history, which it was the cause of. Nothing tells us more about what "constitutional conservatives" are really up to than a look back at the horrors of that war, and the unspeakable evils that it sought to preserve and protect. 

If these gun nuts want to re-fight the Civil War then, in the immortal words of George Dubya Bush: "Bring 'em on." The result will be the same. Just ask Randy Weaver and David Koresh.

P.S. -- Rand Paul's complaints about "King Obama" prove he is a blithering idiot who doesn't understand our Constitution or system of government. Even worse, he doesn't have his dad's wit, simple charisma, consistency or the courage of his [absolutely wrong] convictions. I'll say it again: these scions of prominent politicians are the worst kind -- Rand Paul, Mitt Romney, Dubya, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Al Gore -- and we should avoid them like the plague, because they are out to prove something, not to do what they think is right.

Gun lobby's bad aim shoots down myth of 'constitutional conservatism'

By Paul Rosenberg

February 6, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/20132371127714836.html

AR-15s at Kroger: What the NRA and GOP have given us

Is this what you pro-gun right-wingers want??

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.

And the best part? It was perfectly legal. This is looney tunes! This is America ca. 2013. (Sigh). 

Man Who Brought Loaded AR-15 Into Kroger Grocery Store Will Not Face Charges, Police Say

By Hunter Stuart

January 28, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/14oKvDU

What a Day to Appreciate Guns Across America

You can't make this stuff up, folks. Well, I guess you can't be surprised though. 

And the day's not even over yet, there could very well be more accidental discharges before they finally put their guns away and go to bed!

Just think: If every day were Gun Appreciation Day (aka "Shoot Yourself Or The Unlucky Guy Next To You Day"), there could be at least 1,460 more accidental shootings of the most deserving dumbasses a year. Oh, one can only dream!...

Gun Appreciation Day Celebrated With Accidental Shootings at Gun Shows in North Carolina and Ohio 

By Taylor Berman

January 19, 2013 | Gawker

Two people were wounded Saturday afternoon after an accidental shooting at the Dixie Gun and Knife Show in Raleigh, North Carolina. The incident apparently occurred at a security check point when the owner of a 12-gauge shotgun was asked to remove his gun from its case. Somehow, the gun discharged, shooting a man in the hand and a nearby woman in the side.

Meanwhile, in an entirely unrelated incident, a man at the Medina County Gun Show was shot and injured later Saturday afternoon.

As the Daily Intelligencer notes, today is both Gun Appreciation Day and Guns Across America. What a perfect way to celebrate!

UPDATE: And there was another shooting. A man shot himself in the hand while loading his gun outside the Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show gun show in Indianapolis.

Guns and the media-mental illness red herring

The NRA and the Big Gun lobby are making the following fallacious argument right now in opposing restrictions on large magazines and semi-automatic assault weapons:

1) Mental illness, violent TV/movies, video games, etc. are more to blame than guns for gun violence.

2) These "causes" are really hard to address, for a variety of practical and legal-constitutional reasons. 

3) Since we can't do much about these causes, we shouldn't do anything about guns themselves.

This argument is absurd. It is basically saying, "Since we can't control everything, we can control nothing." Wrong. We can control legally the sale of guns and ammo. All Congress has to do is act.

No, change won't happen overnight. But if we stick to our guns (pardon the pun) and stop going back and forth on gun control every 10 years, then eventually we will see results. 

Grieving over Newtown - without God

Here's a brave voice! To see this on CNN shows that the times they are a-changin'. It's no longer shameful to proclaim your non-belief.

But back to Krauss's argument: if God causes everything, or at least in His infinite goodness allows everything, having been forewarned, to happen, then God wanted these 20 children to be murdered. Then, in our grief, we are obliged to pray to Him lovingly, seek solace and give thanks. GWTF?

Sums up Krauss:

If instead of automatically assuming that prayers to a deity callous enough to allow this sickness, or worse, to encourage it out of divine retribution, are what families in grief need from their president and from the media, that we focused on rational grief counseling and community support, including better mental health care combined with sensible gun control, we as a society might ultimately act more effectively to stop this madness.

Why must the nation grieve with God?

By Lawrence M. Krauss

December 26, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/26/opinion/krauss-grief-faith/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7