“We Sould All Be Angry”: Now Is The Time For Meaningful Gun Control
We should mourn, but we should be angry.
The horror in Newtown, Conn., should shake us out of the cowardice, the fear, the evasion and the opportunism that prevents our political system from acting to curb gun violence.
How often must we note that no other developed country has such massacres on a regular basis because no other comparable nation allows such easy access to guns? And on no subject other than ungodly episodes involving guns are those who respond logically by demanding solutions accused of “politicizing tragedy.”
It is time to insist that such craven propaganda will no longer be taken seriously. If Congress does not act this time, we can deem it as totally bought and paid for by the representatives of gun manufacturers, gun dealers and their very well-compensated apologists. A former high Obama administration official once made this comment to me: “If progressives are so worked up about how Washington is controlled by the banks and Wall Street, why aren’t they just as worked up by the power of the gun lobby?” It is a good question.
There was a different quality to President Obama’s response to this mass shooting, both initially and during his Sunday pilgrimage to offer comfort to the families of victims. I think I know why. It is not just that 20 young children were killed, although that would be enough.
For some months now, there have been rumblings from the administration that Obama has been unhappy with his own policy passivity in responding to the earlier mass shootings and was prepared in his second term to propose tough steps to deal with our national madness on firearms.
He spoke in Newtown in solidarity with the suffering, but pointed toward action. No, he said, we are not “doing enough to keep our children, all our children, safe.” He added: “We will have to change.”
And his initial statement Friday pointed to his exasperation. “We have been through this too many times,” he said, reciting our national litany of unspeakable events, and insisting that we will “have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
“Regardless of the politics.” That is what it will take. This phrase comes easily to a president who just fought his last election, but he and the rest of us must change the politics of guns for those who will face the voters again. We cannot just be sad. We must be angry. We cannot just shake our heads. We must wield our votes and declare that curbing gun violence is one issue among many, but a paramount concern for our country.
And we will have to avoid the paralysis induced by those who cast every mass shooting as the work of one deranged individual and never ever the result of flawed policies. We must beware of those who invoke complexity not to further understanding but to encourage passivity and resignation.
Yes, every social problem and every act of violence have complicated roots. But we already know that it is far too easy to obtain guns in the United States and far too difficult to keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them. And we already know that weapons are available that should not even be sold.
What, minimally, might “meaningful action” look like? We should begin with: bans on high-capacity magazines and assault weapons; requiring background checks for all gun purchases; stricter laws to make sure that gun owners follow safety procedures; new steps to make it easier to trace guns used in crimes; and vastly ramped-up data collection and research on what works to prevent gun violence, both of which are regularly blocked by the gun lobby.
After mass shootings, it’s always said we must improve our mental-health system and the treatment of those who may be prone to violence. Of course we should. But this noble sentiment is too often part of a strategy to evade any action on guns themselves.
Not this time. Americans are not the only people in the world who confront mental-health problems. We are the only country that regularly experiences horrors of this sort. The difference, as the writer Garry Wills has said, is that the United States treats the gun as a secular god, immune to rational analysis and human intervention.
We must depose the false deity. We must act now to curb gun violence, or we never will.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 16, 2012
“With The Blessings Of Congress”: The NRA Is The Enabler Of Mass Murderers
New York Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler called for a “war” on the National Rifle Association in light of the mass shooting in Connecticut today in an interview with Salon, saying the gun lobby group is the “enabler of mass murderers.”
Nadler, a rare fierce advocate of gun control on Capitol Hill, said the shooting should be a wake-up call to our “crazy attitude to guns” and the power of the gun lobby. He noted that other modern industrialized countries like the U.K., Sweden and Germany witness fewer than 50 gun homicides every year, compared to the roughly 10,000 people killed here. The difference, he said, is that they have “rational gun control regimes,” while we can barely even discuss gun control thanks to the power of the gun lobby.
“Al-Qaida killed 3,000 people in the World Trade Center in 2001. The United States went to war because of that. Because of the NRA, we’ve lost 10,000 people last year unnecessarily. It’s time we went to war,” he said. “And you have to say the National Rifle Association is the enabler of mass murderers. And we’ve got to stomp on them instead of kowtowing to them.”
Nadler said he was cautiously hopeful about President Obama’s statement this afternoon that, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”
“I presume he meant that he will take a leadership role in supporting reasonable gun control measures. I hope that’s the case,” Nadler said. “I can’t think of any other meaning … Either it’s empty rhetoric, or it means he’s going to support strong gun control legislation.”
Nadler, who put out a statement today saying “NOW” is the time to talk about gun control, said Americans should demand that their member of Congress “declare themselves” on these issues. He mentioned modest gun control reforms, such as a ban on assault weapons like the one used in the shooting today; a ban on high-capacity magazines that hold dozens of rounds; and microstamping bullets to help police identify homicide suspects.
Most members are scared to get on board, he acknowledged. “The usual suspects introduce the usual legislation. They get a number of co-sponsors and most people stay away from it because of the politics,” he sighed.
“It only takes political courage because the NRA makes people toe the line against the majority view of the country. It’s time the majority stood up and said enough already. And the majority should have a motive because any of us could be a victim tomorrow,” he said. Indeed, Americans strongly support a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and slightly favor stricter gun laws.
“I would hope that these more frequent mass murders would change that politics,” he added. “This is so heartbreaking, and so terrible that this kind of thing happens. And happens routinely now. I think the next time it happens it isn’t even going to be as a big a headline as it used to be. It’s becoming routine.”
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, December 14, 2012
“The Weaponization Of Our Culture”: Ten Arguments Gun Advocates Make And Why They’re Wrong
There has been yet another mass shooting, something that now seems to occur on a monthly basis. Every time another tragedy like this occurs, gun advocates make the same arguments about why we can’t possibly do anything to restrict the weaponization of our culture. Here’s a guide to what they’ll be saying in the coming days:
1. Now isn’t the time to talk about guns.
We’re going to hear this over and over, and not just from gun advocates; Jay Carney said it to White House reporters today. But if we’re not going to talk about it now, when are we going to talk about it? After Sandy hit the East Coast, no one said, “Now isn’t the time to talk about disaster preparedness; best leave that until it doesn’t seem so urgent.” When there’s a terrorist attack, no one says, “Now isn’t the time to talk about terrorism.” Nowl is exactly the time.
2. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Maybe, but people with guns kill many, many more people than they would if they didn’t have guns, and guns designed to kill as many people as possible. We don’t know if the murderer in Newtown was suffering from a suicidal depression, but many mass shooters in the past were. And guess what? People suffer from suicidal depression everywhere in the world. People get angry and upset everywhere in the world. But there aren’t mass shootings every few weeks in England or Costa Rica or Japan, and the reason is that people in those places who have these impulses don’t have an easy way to access lethal weapons and unlimited ammunition. But if you want to kill large numbers of people and you happen to be an American, you’ll find it easy to do.
3. If only everybody around was armed, an ordinary civilian could take out a mass killer before he got too far.
If that were true, then how come it never happens? The truth is that in a chaotic situation, even highly trained police officers often kill bystanders. The idea that some accountant who spent a few hours at the range would suddenly turn into Jason Bourne and take out the killer without doing more harm than good has no basis in reality.
4. We don’t need more laws, we just need to enforce the laws we have.
The people who say this are the same ones who fight to make sure that existing laws are as weak and ineffectual as possible. Our current gun laws are riddled with loopholes and allow people to amass enormous arsenals of military-style weapons with virtually no restrictions.
5. Criminals will always find a way to get guns no matter what measures we take, so what’s the point?
The question isn’t whether we could snap our fingers and make every gun disappear. It’s whether we can make it harder for criminals to get guns, and harder for an unbalanced person with murderous intent to kill so many people. The goal is to reduce violence as much as possible. There’s no other problem for which we’d say if we can’t solve it completely and forever we shouldn’t even try.
6. The Constitution says I have a right to own guns.
Yes it does, but for some reason gun advocates think that the right to bear arms is the only constitutional right that is virtually without limit. You have the right to practice your religion, but not if your religion involves human sacrifice. You have the right to free speech, but you can still be prosecuted for incitement or conspiracy, and you can be sued for libel. Every right is subject to limitation when it begins to threaten others, and the Supreme Court has affirmed that even though there is an individual right to gun ownership, the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right.
And we all know that if this shooter turns out to have a Muslim name, plenty of Americans, including plenty of gun owners, will be more than happy to give up all kinds of rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Have the government read my email? Have my cell phone company turn over my call records? Check which books I’m taking out of the library? Make me take my shoes off before getting on a plane, just because some idiot tried to blow up his sneakers? Sure, do what you’ve got to do. But don’t make it harder to buy thousands of rounds of ammunition, because if we couldn’t do that we’d no longer be free.
7. Widespread gun ownership is a guarantee against tyranny.
If that had anything to do with contemporary life, then mature democracies would be constantly overthrown by despots. But they aren’t. We shouldn’t write laws based on the fantasies of conspiracy theorists.
8. Guns are a part of American culture.
Indeed they are, but so are a lot of things, and that tells us nothing about whether they’re good or bad and how we want to treat them going forward. Slavery was a part of American culture for a couple of hundred years, but eventually we decided it had to go.
9. The American people don’t want more gun control.
The truth is that when public opinion polls have asked Americans about specific measures, the public is in favor of a much more restrictive gun regime than we have now. Significant majorities would like to see the assault weapons ban reinstated, mandatory licensing and training for all gun owners, significant waiting periods for purchases, and host of other restrictions (there are more details here). In many cases, gun owners themselves support more restrictions than we currently have.
10. Having movie theaters and schools full of kids periodically shot up is just a price we should be willing to pay if it means I get to play with guns and pretend I’m Wyatt Earp.
OK, that’s actually an argument gun advocates don’t make. But it’s the truth that lies beneath all their other arguments. All that we suffer because of the proliferation of guns—these horrifying tragedies, the 30,000 Americans who are killed every year with guns—for gun advocates, it’s unfortunate, but it’s a price they’re willing to pay. If only they’d have the guts to say it.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 13, 2012
“Willy Nilly Nonsense”: Mitch McConnell Doesn’t Understand What The Debt Ceiling Is
Now that Republicans have pretty much resigned themselves to the idea that there is going to be some kind of tax increase for the wealthy, they’re comforting themselves with the idea that come early next year, they’ll still be able to re-enact the lovely conflict we had over the debt ceiling in 2011 and hold the American economy hostage to their demands. President Obama has quite sensibly said that we ought to just get rid of the debt ceiling itself, since it serves no purpose and allows a party to engage in just this kind of economic blackmail if it’s desperate and cynical enough. So Republicans are pushing back, none more so than Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. But in the process, McConnell has revealed that he has no idea how the debt ceiling actually works.
What McConnell has been saying is that if we eliminate the debt ceiling, it will give the president all kinds of new powers, to spend money willy-nilly however he wants to, run up the debt, and generally become a kind of fiscal dictator. Yesterday he said about the prospect of eliminating the debt ceiling, “I don’t think that there’s any sentiment whatsoever for giving the President perpetual authority without congressional involvement.” And last week in a speech on the Senate floor, he said this:
By demanding the power to raise the debt limit whenever he wants by as much as he wants, he showed what he’s really after is assuming unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit. This isn’t about getting a handle on deficits or debt for him. It’s about spending even more than he already is. Why else would he demand the power to raise the debt limit on his own? And by the way, why on earth would we even consider giving a President who’s brought us four years of trillion dollar deficits unchecked authority to borrow – he’s the last person who should have limitless borrowing power.
Wow, that really would be terrible, if the president had “unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit,” with “unchecked authority to borrow.” The only trouble is that eliminating the debt ceiling does nothing of the sort. In case you’ve forgotten your fourth-grade civics, Congress sets the budget, not the president. The president can’t spend a dollar that Congress doesn’t appropriate. He can’t borrow a dollar that Congress hasn’t said he should borrow. When we reach the debt limit and then go past it, it isn’t because of anything the president has done, it’s because of the budget Congress has written. The reason we take on debt is because federal spending, set by Congress, exceeds federal tax revenues, also set by Congress. The only thing the debt ceiling does is require Congress to have what is in effect an additional vote on their own budget. Eliminating the debt ceiling doesn’t give the president one iota more authority or power. What it does, however, is take away the power the Republicans now have to use blackmail to achieve their policy goals.
OK, so I was kidding when I said Mitch McConnell doesn’t know how the debt ceiling works. He knows exactly how it works. But he also knows that most Americans know next to nothing about it, and he knows that reporters will dutifully pass on whatever he says about it, without adding the appropriate disclaimer that would make their reporting about this topic accurate.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 12, 2012
“We The People Are Watching”: It’s Time For The GOP To Stop Saying ‘No’ And Start Compromising
New polls have bad news for the GOP when it comes to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
The public is more interested in the budget negotiations than any other news story—even the Petraeus sex scandal, according to a recent PEW survey.
Americans have also decided in advance who will be to blame if the budget negotiations fail and we enter 2013 without a deal to avoid across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts—the GOP.
According to a new CNN poll, 45 percent of Americans say they will blame the Republicans–compared to the 34 percent who would blame President Obama. That margin of 11 percent is nearly four times the edge that gave the president his re-election. And 53 percent have an unfavorable view of the Republican Party.
Why is the public so prone to blame Republican members of the House and Senate?
Maybe they’ve been paying attention.
Indeed, 7 out of 10 say the GOP has not done enough to compromise with the president. They made stonewalling their strategy in 2009 and have basically not any made exceptions since — except when they were tricked into doing so. A vast majority of Republicans in Congress have signed Grover Norquist’s pledge that basically means they’re unwilling to compromise—though some senators have started to back away from that once-firm commitment.
Voters also agree with Democrats on the issues — 56 percent say taxes on the wealthy should be kept high. And even Republicans agree by an 8-percent margin that any deal should include tax increases along with spending cuts.
“77% believe that their personal financial situation will be affected if the government goes off the fiscal cliff,” said CNN polling director Keating Holland.
Four years of Republicans hyping the fear that the deficit will personally hurt individual Americans has been effective. But, as The New York Times‘ Paul Krugman writes, “…the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much.”
The president has the upper hand in the negotiation and the GOP’s weakness is demonstrated by the fact that they have a member of the losing Republican ticket on their negotiating team.
But will that be enough? Can this GOP say “yes” to a deal that doesn’t punish the middle class? If past is prologue, the odds aren’t good.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, November 26, 2012
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