“A Rising Up From Within”: NRA Members Need To Step Up On Ending Gun Violence
Please, Mr. Bloomberg… leave the checkbook open, but step away from the podium.
Your efforts to curb gun violence and improve firearms safety are notable. The National Rifle Association thanks you.
For years, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the best membership recruitment tool the NRA could hope for: a walking, talking, Big Gulp-banning embodiment of government overreach. And look what he’s done now… given the NRA yet another gift on the eve of their national convention.
In Bloomberg’s mind, his new national organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, is is a much-needed counter to the NRA: a grassroots effort that will encourage pro-gun-control voters to step up to the polls, press for expanding background checks at the state and national levels, and make sure states keep guns away from the dangerously mentally ill and domestic-violence offenders.
Everytown for Gun Safety seeks to accomplish virtually everything the NRA has opposed in recent years. Its agenda is filled with action that needs to happen to ensure more Americans don’t die by gunfire, whether accidental, suicidal or homicidal. And Bloomberg, a billionaire, is bankrolling it with $50 million.
That’s not the problem. What is worrisome is that Bloomberg plans on chairing the new group. At this point, he seems determined to be its most out-front face.
Great. He might as well have just handed the NRA talking points for its Indianapolis convention, which begins April 25.
The sad fact about the gun debate in America is that the voices on the extremes are the loudest, and they drown out those in the middle. Yes, there is a middle ground. Bloomberg just rarely conveys it.
In an interview with The New York Times to announce Everytown, he praised himself for his good deeds: “If there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”
This declaration was made with a smile, but the joke reveals one of Bloomberg’s qualities, his arrogance, which has a way of putting off even those of us who agree that secondhand cigarette smoke is dangerous, trans fats are unhealthy and large sugary soft drinks are a dietary scourge. And, oh yes, guns need to be better controlled.
But it wasn’t the common-sense messaging that took the lead following the introduction of Everytown for Gun Safety. No, it was Bloomberg.
The Washington Times didn’t waste an opportunity to twit the great potentate on his pompous gates-of-heaven-quote. Its editorial was headlined “Sainthood for gun-grabbing ex-Mayor Bloomberg.” The piece painted Bloomberg as a money-wasting loser, making great sport of the pro-gun-control candidates he has backed who have lost elections.
In truth, NRA-bankrolled candidates have also seen their share of defeat in recent elections. But that’s the sort of fact-check that both sides conveniently leave out. It’s in the middle ground where reason lies, where the really effective mobilizing needs to occur.
Want to move gun control efforts in this country? Energize the former or current NRA members who believe the organization no longer represents their interests.
They’re out there. The hunters, marksmen and concealed-carry license holders who readily acknowledge that violent crime is down and that there is little use for a hunter to have a military-grade weapon. Peruse hunter listservs and listen to people talk about fearing the hyped-up shooters who carry magazines to track small game like quail. Listen to families who have lost members to suicides — deaths that could have been prevented had a gun been locked away from a depressed person.
Vilifying the NRA can actually be counterproductive. It merely puffs up the organization’s most alarmist elements.
What really needs to happen is a change of thinking within the NRA membership: a rising up from within the ranks of the calm and reasonable gun owners. The stage is wide open for an effective spokesperson. Maybe a celebrity with a passion for hunting and a deep conviction that stopping many of the 31,000 American deaths to gunfire each year is not only doable, it’s an American obligation.
For all the good he has accomplished, Bloomberg just isn’t the man for that cause.
By: Mary Sanchez, The National Memo, April 22, 2014
“What’s Wrong With Gun Registration?”: Impeded By Gun Proponents Stirred Up And Financed By A Cynical Commercial Gun Lobby
I live in Maryland, whose nickname is the “Free State,” and I am no less free because of the laws in my state require registration of handguns and prohibit the more dangerous varieties of firearms, magazines and ammunition. In fact, I feel more free because I have less fear of being blown away, freedom and all, than I would have if guns were less regulated.
Very few people have serious objections to registration of activities in many other contexts; we register our cars, dogs, bicycles, burglar alarms, births, deaths, marriages and our kids into schools every day. Even with no military draft, we have draft registration. Many people have totally given up on privacy in giving any information to businesses. But guns are treated differently. Why? One reason is that we are inundated by demands that we do so from loud gun proponents stirred up and financed by a cynical commercial gun lobby. Another is we all have at least a little bit of rebellion in us and we can dream of throwing off the restraints of civilization and of running wild.
But we should not forget that this dream is a dream of going back to the state of nature and, as every one knows, the state of nature is where life is “nasty, brutish and short.” It certainly was short for the twenty children and six teachers who died at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the thirty thousand or so who died from gun incidents last year.
The slogan or talking point “registration always leads to confiscation” has been taken up and repeated so many times that it seems impossible to trace its origin. Of course, law enforcement agencies, whether tyrannical or benign, have seized illegal items as part of their duties throughout history; but the picture being painted by gun zealots is of “jack-booted thugs” from the federal government taking the tools of liberty from true patriots. An example of this is currently happening in New York State where the SAFE Act requires registration of assault weapons. Many owners are being reported as unwilling to comply.
Seizure of weapons that are illegal, held by prohibited persons or not brought into compliance with licensing requirements is being presented as a sinister conspiracy rather than normal law enforcement. A U.S. congressman, Steve Stockman (R-TX), has just introduced a bill to cut off federal funds to states engaging in “registration” or “confiscation” of guns.
The NRA expresses fear of government tracking in amazing detail. For example, it filed a Friend of the Court brief against National Security Administration data collection on the grounds that such data could identify firearm ownership, siding with the ACLU.
Lots of people have frustrations about the current state of society and it’s easy to project these frustrations onto the government, but we don’t live in a tyranny and President Obama isn’t a totalitarian dictator. We have an amazing array of freedoms which would be severely put in jeopardy if we did have a revolution. The existence or even the perception of armed angry people hiding their identity among us and waiting to spring forth diminishes our ability to find happy, productive and unmolested lives. In our society, the vast majority of our citizens stand for enforcement of the law as it is adopted by our representatives in legislatures or Congress, and even the NRA calls for the enforcement of laws while they work to make that enforcement impossible.
So those of us who don’t live our lives in paranoid fear and can sleep without having a gun under our beds can ask why we would want to insist that guns be registered with the government. The most important reason is to keep guns out of dangerous hands. Our existing system for that purpose is to background check some sales of guns, but there is an immense loophole for private sales in most states. Anyone with an interest in getting a gun knows where to buy one without a check being performed. The background check system also is dependent on identifying from the entire population, not just those wanting to acquire guns, those who are prohibited and keeping that list in databases. A registration and permit system would apply to all sales and require determining the suitability of only those wanting to buy a gun at the current moment.
Another limitation of background checking is that it assumes that a person passing the check will remain a legal gun possessor indefinitely. Many of the situations that are denounced as confiscation consist of a government moving to seize guns already in the hands of people who are later convicted of crimes that make their continued gun possession illegal. Getting these guns out of the hands of their now illegal owners is critical to protecting the public but is slowed and blocked by resistance from legislatures and pro-gun forces.
A gun registration system can also serve the goals of preventing legal owners from letting their guns get into illegal hands in secondary ways. It can include a requirement that gun transfers, losses and thefts be reported. This will help greatly in investigation of illegal guns seized on the street and of incidents of gun violence.
If firearm registration remains politically infeasible, there is another way to accomplish most of these goals. That is to have insurance, starting at manufacture and requiring continuance of insurer responsibility through all transfers unless replaced by new insurance. Readers who know my writing know I spend most of my time advocating such insurance in the face of massive resistance from both the gun and the insurance industry.
By: Tom Harvey, The Huffington Post Blog, April 22, 2014
“Lives In The Balance”: Smoking Guns, The Deafening Silence Of The Assault Weapons Makers
When I hear about another military-style assault-weapon tragedy, I can’t help thinking about cigarettes.
It’s faded a bit into history now, but it was roughly 20 years ago that the heads of seven major tobacco companies were called before Congress to testify in hearings about regulating their products.
History was made when, one by one, they testified under oath that they, personally, did not believe nicotine is addictive – even though their scientists had generated box cars of data showing that creating addiction was precisely the point. One by one, the CEOs willfully deceived Congress in a roll call of commercial infamy: Philip Morris, RJ Reynolds, U.S. Tobacco, Lorillard, Liggett, Brown and Williamson, American Tobacco.
By the time the hearings were over, the CEOs were being called “The Seven Dwarfs.”
So, from cigarettes to guns: Where is that public debate with the makers of hollow point bullets, high capacity magazines, and weapons designed to harm and kill human beings as quickly as possible?
(By the way, if you want to wade into these waters, keep your facts straight. A fully automatic weapon fires bullets as long as you hold down the trigger. They’re not illegal, but they are highly regulated. A semiautomatic weapon fires as fast as you can pull the trigger. You can get one at Walmart. There is no technical definition of assault weapon, but it generally refers to both automatic and semiautomatic rifles. In fact, the very complexity of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban riddled it with so many exceptions that it proved largely ineffective.)
I’ve posed that question of the cigarette maker-gun maker connection in various forums, and I get some interesting, angry, and often logic- twisting responses.
Among my favorites:
– You can’t compare cigarettes and assault weapons. Cigarettes harm and kill a lot more people. Accountability for these two product-related deaths tolls, then, is a matter of degree.
– Why not regulate blunt instruments? More people are killed by hammers each year than by guns – including assault weapons. The fact is: if you torture the data long enough you can make it confess to anything. And there is no doubt that there is a cottage industry on both sides in making statistics fit arguments.
But missing in those arguments: of all the implements used to kill people — knives, fists or a handy vase – only guns are created to do exactly that, and only assault weapons are manufactured expressly to do that as quickly as possible. Seriously – could Adam Lanza have dispatched 26 innocent souls in Newtown in five minutes with anything but an assault weapon?
And of course, there is the second amendment. I won’t try to imagine what was in the minds of the Founding Fathers. But I’m going to guess their thinking did not include high-capacity magazines (the ones Lanza carried held 30 bullets each) that serve up a new bullet as soon as the previous one is fired, and bullets designed to explode inside your body.
Still, as we debate statistics and parse definitions, the public is largely unaware of the companies that are making the weapons that are the subject of the debate. And that is exactly as intended.
Who can come up with the names of the top makers of semi-automatic weapons: like Bushmaster, Sig Sauer, Colt, Smith & Wesson, ArmaLite, DPMS and others?
The reason most people can’t name these companies is because of a very slick sleight of hand – executed flawlessly by NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, the gleefully belligerent face of the NRA who expertly draws attention away from the industry he represents.
LaPierre is very good at a job he is paid a lot of money to do. As long as we’re talking about his outrageous bluster, we’re not talking about the people who make a lot of money from the products he wants to keep on shelves of the local sporting goods store and laid out at gun shows.
His ability to do that is increasingly important to the industry. As hunting declines, so do rifle sales – even with periodic spikes driven by fears of gun restrictions. Long term, how do you replace that? A report from the Violence Policy Center argues that selling military-style assault rifles – re-branded as “modern sporting rifles” – to civilians has been a key part of the industry’s marketing strategy since the 1980s. Women, say gun control advocates and the industry alike, are a high marketing priority. The gun makers insist it’s for their protection. The lethal AR-15 (used in both the Aurora and Newtown killings) comes in pink. (Available now at Gun Goddess.com)
As the debate over assault weapons rages on, the deafening silence of the gun makers reminds me of a lyric in the Jackson Brown song – “Lives in the Balance.” “I want to know who the men in the shadows are. I want to hear somebody asking them why.”
Those who have been killed and injured by weapons made expressly for that purpose deserve no less.
By: Peggy Drexler, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University; Time Magazine, January 17, 2014
“We Need Gun Control To Stop More Than Criminals”: Gun Violence Isn’t Only Committed By Classic Criminals
Opponents of any kind of gun restrictions argue that they are meaningless, since criminals by definition don’t follow the law, and therefore won’t allow gun laws to hamstring their criminal behavior. That’s true. But gun violence isn’t only committed by classic criminals, as recent gun-related tragedies show.
There’s the 12-year-old who apparently took a shotgun out of a musical instrument case and shot and injured two classmates at a middle school in New Mexico. His behavior would make him a criminal (and what is a 12-year-old doing with a gun?). But most likely, his classmates and teachers did not see him as your basic law-breaker. He was, the Los Angeles Times reports, a bright but distant boy. He was able to get a gun because his family is a gun family, enjoying hunting. Are they criminals? It doesn’t sound like it. The boy simply had easy access to a gun, without which he would not have been able to do the damage he has done. We don’t yet know the circumstances of the origin of the gun used, but could the tragedy have been averted had there been mandatory safety stopgaps – either on the weapon itself, or with a requirement that the guns be kept in a locked structure?
A man in Florida, meanwhile, shot and killed a fellow movie-goer after said viewer refused to stop texting. The annoyance of the shooter is more than understandable – and many of us might have no problem with grabbing a phone from a theater-goer, throwing it on the floor and stomping on it – but the fact that this man felt he could shoot and kill someone for behaving so boorishly is alarming. Is he a criminal? It didn’t sound like it, based on evidence from before the shooting. In fact, he was a retired police office with a spotless record. And early reports indicate he thought he was being threatened (turns out the “threat” may have just been thrown popcorn). The point is he had a gun, had it with him in a movie theater, and could not have killed someone if he had not had the weapon with him. If people were not allowed to carry concealed weapons into the theater, this particular tragedy may not have happened.
On Wednesday night, a gunman opened fire at an Indiana grocery store, killing two people with a semi-automatic weapon before police shot and killed the gunman. That offender may well have been a classic criminal before the episode. We may never know, as he can’t tell us his back-story. If he was a troubled person (and his behavior suggests that he was), would a simple background check have kept him from getting such a gun?
Ban guns and only criminals will have guns, we are told. Put restrictions on gun ownership, or require people to undergo background checks first, and we will only make it harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns for protection, gun rights advocates say. They are right on both counts. But it would still prevent a great many murders.
By: Susan Milligan, Washington Whispers, U.S. News and World Report, January 16, 2014
“Freedom’s Just Another Word For Guns”: Honor Lincoln And MLK By Getting Yourself An AR-15
Let’s say you’re a local Republican party organization in a Democratic state, and you want to think creatively about how to get media attention. You could put up a “Kiss a Capitalist” booth at the county fair, or hire a local graffiti artist to spray-paint portraits of Ronald Reagan on the homes of poor people in order to inspire them to take a firm hold of those bootstraps and pull. Or, in honor of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, two liberals who got assassinated with guns, you could raffle off an AR-15. That’s what the Multnomah county GOP is doing, and you have to give them credit: people are noticing! Here’s part of their press release:
Multnomah County Republicans recognize the incredible time of year we are in. In successive months to start the year, we celebrate the legacy of two great Republicans who demonstrated leadership and courage that all of us still lean on today: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Lincoln. In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against, the Multnomah County Republican Party announces that we have started our third raffle for an AR-15 rifle (or handgun of the winner’s choice).
For the record, Martin Luther King was not a Republican, and Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party was the liberal party of its day; just ask yourself what side the average Tea Party Republican of today would have been on had they been alive in 1864. And let’s try to unpack that last sentence: “In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against…” So wait, are you celebrating the denial of rights? And which rights did they fight against? I’m confused.
Grammatical puzzlers aside, this is some high-grade, industrial-strength trolling. For some people, freedom’s just another word for … guns. That’s really all it’s a word for. Freedom is guns, and guns is freedom, and if a historical figure sought to correct injustice, then obviously he would have been opposed to the worst injustice of all, which is when you have three AR-15s and you want to get a fourth one, but you have to get a background check to get it instead of just buying it out of some dude’s trunk at three in the morning in the parking lot of the Piggly Wiggly like James Madison intended.
And here’s the best part of that article about the raffle: “The winner will be given a background check before receiving the weapon.” Wouldn’t want any nuts getting their hands on it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, January 15, 2014
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