“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
“Turning Civic Institutions Into Crime Scenes: Newtown Massacre Should Force America To Stare Into The Abyss
In this painful but necessary post-Newtown discussion, gun control advocates should prepare for the worst. That Republicans will ratchet up their extremism, that Democrats will cave as they do – some legitimately fearful that the NRA’s cartoonish villainy will haunt them next election cycle. It is likely, therefore, that even after such an unfathomable tragedy, policies like a national gun registry and the assault weapons ban will remain but pipe dreams, despite the fact that these guns – including a high powered rifle – were purchased legally.
Fine. If we can save lives without one iota of gun control, so be it. It’s time, then, that we talk about the deep-seeded malaise that is turning civic institutions into gruesome crime scenes. After all, there are people that own impressive weaponry who don’t feel the need to use it to tragic effect – so let’s launch an inquest as to why this is the case.
Mental health is becoming a massive issue in this debate and with good cause. The subject, in general, might have long been held as one of America’s last taboos. But that was shattered – at least in the context of mass murder – after a clearly disturbed Cho Seung-Hui circulated a ranting video to media outlets just before launching his killing spree on Virginia Tech’s campus in 2007. The Tuscon massacre committed by Jared Lee Loughner, too, made us stare the issue square in the face in early 2011, after his disturbing mugshot was plastered above almost every centerfold in the country. Aurora shooter James Holmes also reportedly sought out help before committing his heinous killings – and, allegedly, declared himself to be The Joker afterwards. And, while facts are emerging, it appears that Adam Lanza, too, “had some sort of mental disability or developmental disorder” and “often [made] those around him nervous because he was painfully shy and seemed to struggle to be social and form connections with people.” This isn’t to say that all mentally ill or developmentally different people are risks to the public order – far from it. Its just that they can act out in a spectacularly violent fashion when their conditions go untreated, unnoticed and misunderstood.
So what are some social conditions that might cause a mentally unwell person to deteriorate to the point of acting out in such a manner? On one hand, a collective failure to fully comprehend and care for mental illness exacerbates it. On the other, a regrettable frat-boy exalting culture stokes the flames of instability. Mark Ames – Matt Taibbi’s old colleague at the gonzo Muscovite paper, The eXile, for those unfamiliar – looked into common themes in rage massacres in his book Going Postal. He managed to sketch a compelling profile of workplace killers and school shooters as the victims of sustained bullying campaigns – a byproduct of the culture fostered by the dog-eat-dog Reagan years (though some of the killers might not seem to fit the profile of a goth nerd stuffed into lockers, neglect is a form of abuse). This isn’t to say that everyone who is bullied commits mass murder. But that mass murder often results from a culture that was unsafe to begin with.
Democrats could, therefore, use this mass shooting epidemic as an opportunity to talk about this: How we systematically encourage (if only tacitly) our children to bully for marginal gains in status; how our sons and daughters remain neglected because parents work long hours at menial jobs that barely pay the bills.
I assume that Republicans – having just failed to elect a cold-hearted bully of Presidential candidate – would squirm at the thought of having this discussion if Democrats increasingly demanded that it happen. It would be ideal, in my opinion, if we did address these issues. If not, then pressure on the GOP to engage in such a discourse, might at least force it into talking gun control instead.
By: Samuel Knight, The American Prospect, December 15, 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
“Homemade Trail Mix”: Obama-Fearing Gun Nuts Are, Well, Nuts
There seems to be a little confusion on the part of gun enthusiasts about what a second Obama term means for them, and how they can battle any efforts to control their firearms ownership.
First, there are the nervous sorts who raced out and bought guns rights away after President Obama was re-elected. The subtext is that somehow this president will take away their guns—and yet there is no evidence to indicate that. In fact, the opposite is true: Obama has not only not done anything to advance gun control, but he actually expanded gun rights early in his term, signing a law that allows people to bring guns onto federal land.
Nor does the ongoing Democratic majority in the Senate pose a plausible threat. The Democrats, while perhaps at heart in favor of sensible limits on guns, figured out a long time ago that they will only be the majority party if they keep pretty quiet about that—and allow some of their recruits to be staunchly pro-gun.
But while that seems a tad hysterical, as a reaction to Obama’s win, it’s positively rational compared to the behavior of the owner of an Arizona gun shop. Says a full-page newspaper ad in the White Mountain Independent:
If you voted for Barack Obama your business is NOT WELCOME at Southwest Shooting Authority. You have proven you are not responsible enough to own a firearm.
There are some obvious inherent problems with this policy. For one, how will the owner know whom a potential buyer voted for in the election? Secondly, wouldn’t a gun-owning, pro-Obama voter be more likely to pull the party even closer to an embrace of the Second Amendment (omitting the inconvenient part about a “well-regulated militia”)? And if someone opposes gun control, why initiate a de facto limit on gun ownership by denying your firearms business to the 51 percent of voters who indeed chose Obama?
Perhaps the owner believes there will be, as a Texas judge irresponsibly and irrationally predicted, some sort of civil war provoked by Obama’s re-election—and maybe he doesn’t want the other side to have guns. Or maybe it’s just about the “other”—Obama’s race, his unusual name, and the legions of African-Americans, Latinos, gays, lesbians, single women and everyone else who doesn’t fit into the Ward Cleaver mode—that are giving the gunshop owner such a case of the nerves. He might want to get used to it. He’s now in the minority.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, November 19, 2012
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 