“What About Rights Of Those Killed By Gun Violence”: President Obama Isn’t Taking People’s Guns—But Maybe He Should
President Obama said a lot about guns in his teary press conference Tuesday, but the one thing that he is not saying, despite all the howling from the right, is that he intends to take away Americans’ guns. Yet equally significant is the realization that individual citizens are unwilling to free themselves of the destructive weapons that are wreaking havoc on our society. Numerous Americans care more about their individual freedoms than our collective freedoms, and they are unable to see how these individualistic desires undermine the essential fabric of a democracy.
This democratic fabric includes the Second Amendment, which has been contorted, misinterpreted, and applied in a way that destroys its intended meaning and threatens the safety and stability of our nation. And as the president pointed out on Tuesday, this grotesque emphasis on the Second Amendment impairs other Americans’ ability to freely exercise many of the other 26 amendments.
As President Obama forges a lone path toward gun regulation, we must wonder how we as a society have arrived to a point where “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” has morphed into allowing individual citizens to possess firearms for their individual protection with little to no concern about the security of a free state.
It is well documented that gun sales and gun-related deaths have increased since Obama came into office, but the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller (PDF), which opened the floodgates and redefined the Second Amendment, rarely receives mention.
The court’s decision in the case went against 70 years of legal interpretations of the Second Amendment that stated in United States v. Miller that the “obvious purpose” of the Second Amendment was to “assure the continuation and render possible the effectiveness of” the state militia, and the Amendment “must be interpreted and applied with that end in view.”
In Heller and then in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the Supreme Court in a pair of 5-4 decisions determined that federal, state, and local governments could not create restrictions that could prevent an individual the right to possess a firearm in the home for self-defense. The intent of the Second Amendment had shifted from allowing citizens to own firearms so that they could band together in an organized and regulated militia run by either local, state, or federal governments to allowing citizens to own guns for their own purposes so long as they fell under the individual’s definition of self-defense.
Not surprisingly, countless Americans purchased more and more firearms to protect themselves from the “inevitable” moment when the government or “Obama” was going to forcefully take their guns away. Not surprisingly a byproduct of this new interpretation of the Second Amendment has been a rise in unregulated militias or American terrorist groups who challenge the authority of federal, state, and local governments. Ammon Bundy and his posse of men who call themselves the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, who just this week forcefully took over a federal building in Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, are just one such iteration of this emboldened unregulated militia movement in America.
The Oath Keepers, formed in 2009, are one of the largest unregulated militia movements in the nation, and regularly you can find them injecting themselves unnecessarily into conflicts. In Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown, Oath Keepers arrived carrying semi-automatic rifles so that they could prevent looters from destroying property, and many of them said that they saw nothing wrong with taking the life of a looter to prevent the destruction of property. They also advocated that Ferguson residents obtain firearms so that they could protect themselves from the police.
Instability, terror, and death are the inevitable outcomes of a heavily armed citizenry, yet in the 1846 case Nunn v. State of Georgia, an integral case that the Supreme Court used in the Heller decision, the state of Georgia—my home state—argued that arming citizens and allowing them to openly carry firearms created a safer environment. And the referencing of this decision only continues the Supreme Court’s idyllic reimagining of America’s Southern states.
Georgia in 1846 was a slave-holding state where African Americans were counted as three-fifths of a person and were not allowed the right to vote. Firearms at this time were regularly used to keep blacks in line and sustain the South’s racist, oppressive society. Additionally, duels were a regular occurrence in the South during this time period. In this volatile environment, carrying a firearm out in the open actually did bring about stability. The reason for this was that carrying a concealed weapon was illegal. Therefore, the assumption within society was that most white men owned or carried a gun, so being able to see everyone’s gun made it less likely that anyone would be killed by a surprise bullet. Additionally, guns could not be removed from the society because they were needed to oppress, intimidate, and terrorize blacks in the state.
This was a society whose infrastructure and logic regarding social stability should no longer be applicable to modern society, yet in recent years it has been to disastrous effect. Democracy and valuing human life were not principles that were celebrated in the pre-Civil War South.
But far from rejecting that old logic, we’ve embraced it, and the application of the South’s antithetical principles have brought instability, danger, and a disregard for human life to rest of the United States. Armed and dangerous and unregulated militias are on the rise, in addition to the numerous lone-wolf attacks that befall schools, offices, shopping centers, and public spaces at a disturbing frequency.
Right now the Second Amendment is being applied in a way that takes away the rights of thousands of Americans each year. The president must address this crisis, and not only to ensure the safety and stability of the American citizens who are threatened by gun violence. He also must do it to preserve the ideals and institutions that govern our society that are being threatened by the archaic notions of stability from a racist and oppressive society and the unregulated militias of today that openly advocate armed conflict against the government.
Obama is not going to take away America’s guns. I would argue that he should, as countless Americans have displayed a gross misuse of the social responsibility that comes with gun ownership, except that using force to attempt to disarm people of their firearms might inevitably lead to more violence and bloodshed.
Gun owners should want to regulate and reduce their gun usage for the greater good, but our society is too consumed with the myopia of employing lethal force to resolve minor disputes that it cannot imagine an environment without widespread gun usage. And countless Americans are unable to see that their gun usage actually jeopardizes the very freedoms and liberties they have chosen to fight for and defend via the barrel of a gun.
By: Barrett Holmes Pitner, The Daily Beast, January 7, 2016
“A Symbiotic Relationship”: How The NRA And Gun Manufacturers Work Together To Scam Gun Owners
If you took gun advocates at their word, you might think they’re enormously displeased when President Obama discusses measures like the expansion (or if you like, clarification) of the background check system that he announced on Tuesday. But the truth is this: When Obama talks about guns, the National Rifle Association couldn’t be happier. When Republican politicians decry Obama’s moves as a dire threat to Second Amendment rights (“Obama wants your guns” declares a web page the Ted Cruz campaign set up in response, portraying the president as some kind of quasi-fascist commando presumably about to kick down your door), they smile in satisfaction. That’s because the NRA and the gun manufacturers are in a symbiotic relationship, where they both benefit whenever guns become a political issue.
For the NRA, it’s about members and money. For the gun manufacturers, it’s about sales and protection from legal liability. And as long as gun owners are kept agitated, angry, and afraid, they both win.
Here’s how it works. There’s a mass shooting, then President Obama suggests we really need to do something about gun violence. Maybe he has a specific proposal as he did this week, or maybe he doesn’t. But the details don’t matter. Immediately, the NRA condemns him and other Democrats, then shouts, “They’re coming for your guns!” to its members, and all gun owners. A healthy chunk of those gun owners respond by rushing down to the gun store to buy more guns, lest they miss their chance before Obama comes to take them away. The threat always turns out to be imaginary; more background checks wouldn’t stop anyone legally authorized to buy a gun from doing so, let alone take away guns people already own. But no one seems to notice that the NRA is the boy who cried “wolf” again and again. Within a month or two, the cycle will repeat itself.
The NRA gets tens of millions of dollars from gun manufacturers, through a variety of channels, not just checks but advertising in NRA publications and special promotions the manufacturers run. For instance, every time someone buys a Ruger, the company donates $2 to the NRA. Buy one from Taurus, and they’ll pay for a year’s membership in the NRA.
And even though the relationship isn’t always perfectly friendly — the NRA has organized boycotts of manufacturers it felt weren’t towing the properly extreme line on regulations — with the NRA’s help, there’s never been a better time to be in the gun business. Gun sales are booming, and 2015 was the best year yet. We can use FBI background checks as a proxy for sales (even though many sales don’t require a background check), and last year, the agency performed a record 23 million checks. That has more than doubled just since 2007, which was by sheer coincidence the year before Barack Obama got elected.
What’s particularly remarkable about this increase in gun sales is that it comes at a time when gun ownership is on a long, steady decline. With fewer Americans living in rural areas and hunting no longer as popular a recreational activity as it once was, far fewer Americans own guns today than a generation or two ago. According to data from the General Social Survey, in 1977, 50 percent of Americans said there was a gun in their home; by 2014 the number had declined to 31 percent. That’s still a lot, of course, but given the demographics of gun ownership — among other things, members of fast-growing minority groups like Hispanics are far less likely to own guns — the downward trend will probably continue.
The numbers tell the story of a transformation in gun culture, from many more people owning a gun or two (often a rifle or a shotgun) to a smaller number of owners each buying many more guns, mostly handguns. And this is just what the NRA encourages, by feeding twin climates of fear. First, the organization, particularly its chief Wayne LaPierre, regularly describes America as a kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape right out of Mad Max, where only the armed can survive. As he wrote in a 2013 article, “Hurricanes. Tornadoes. Riots. Terrorists. Gangs. Lone criminals. These are perils we are sure to face — not just maybe. It’s not paranoia to buy a gun. It’s survival.”
Second, the NRA cries that no matter what’s going on in the political world, it portends an imminent massive gun confiscation. President Obama wants more background checks? Nope, he’s really coming to take your guns. There’s an election coming up? If Democrats win, they’re going to take your guns. You shouldn’t just have a gun, you should have lots of guns, and you should buy more right now because you never know when the government are going to send their jackbooted thugs to invade your home and take them away.
What do you call the frightened, paranoid, insecure guy having a midlife crisis who prepares for the inevitable breakdown of society and shakes his fist at the president? You call him a customer. He’s the one who responds to every “urgent” appeal from the NRA to donate a few more dollars and go buy another rifle or handgun or two, while the manufacturers watch their profits rise and their stock prices soar. He’s money in the bank.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, January 7, 2016
“There Must Be Some Logical Explanation, Right?”: Republican Doublethink On Mass Shootings; Scott Walker Edition
Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who recently joined the Republican primary carnival in an “official” way, says the government should reauthorize the Patriot Act in response to the murder of four Marines in Chattanooga, Tenn., by a 24-year-old gunman.
And he suggested that changing a policy that stops military personnel from carrying weapons in certain civilian areas would have prevented the attack. Those policies “are outdated,” Mr. Walker said on Fox News, because the United States is “at war and radical Islamic terrorism is our enemy.”
After a career criminal who had illegally entered the United States killed a San Francisco woman on July 1, Bill O’Reilly demanded that Congress pass a law that would impose mandatory sentences on people who repeatedly enter the country illegally and members of the right-wing Republican caucus in the House eagerly responded.
The idea was that such a law, along with another proposal to strip cities of federal funds if their police are not required to turn over all undocumented people to the federal government, would prevent shootings like the one in San Francisco.
This leaves me a little confused.
After any highly publicized killing – like the murders in Charleston, or Newtown, or in any number of other places — advocates of gun control call for greater restrictions on the sale and use of firearms. And people on the right, like Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Walker, reliably respond by saying that no law could have prevented those killings.
So, which is it? Can no law stop a determined person from killing another human being? Or can laws do that? It would be inconsistent, if not hypocritical, to take both positions, so there must be some logical explanation.
Mr. Walker and the Fox host Megyn Kelly tut-tutted about the fact that President Obama did not immediately call the Chattanooga killer a Muslim terrorist. They had no idea at the time whether that was true, but the point of the exchange was to attack Mr. Obama. They used it to revive another favorite talking point – that the president did not quickly label the attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi as a terrorist attack (even though he actually did).
Oddly enough – or maybe not oddly at all – Mr. Walker called the murder of nine African Americans in a Charleston church a “racist” and “evil” act, but neither he, nor any other Republican candidate or public figure that I can find called it an act of terrorism, which is precisely what it was.
Senator Lindsey Graham, another Republican presidential poser, called it “racial jihadism,” but that was mainly to deflect attention from the real motivations for the murders and toss that “jihad” word out there.
I’m sure there is a logical explanation for that, too.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, Taking Note, The Editorial Page Editors Blog, The New York Times, July 17, 2015
“How Wayne LaPierre Increases Gun Sales”: Completely Freaking Out The Public About Some Imminent Demise Of Law And Order
The National Rifle Association is holding their annual conference in Indianapolis this year, and Wayne LaPierre is sounding more unhinged than ever. He sounds almost as paranoid as our quail-hunting former vice-president.
Perhaps the nation’s most visible gun rights advocate, LaPierre drew a stark picture of the dangers that he said plague the country and argued the government has failed to protect its citizens.
“We know that in the world that surrounds us there are terrorists, home invaders, drug cartels, car jackers, ‘knock-out’ gamers, rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse as a society that sustains us all,” he said.
“So I ask you this afternoon: do you trust this government really to protect you and your family?” he continued. “We’re on our own. That’s a certainty.”
LaPierre got so worked up there that basic grammar broke down for him. I don’t know quite what to make from such heated rhetoric. Is it some kind of sign of desperation? Do the people who travel to NRA conferences really need to be sustained on this level of high-octane bugnuttery?
Notice the incredible inversion of reality, where campus killers and shopping mall killers and airport killers are less a threat because they’ve legally purchased semiautomatic weapons despite being insane than they are an excuse for the rest of us to purchase semiautomatic weapons for our own defense.
Notice that the argument is not that we need to be armed to serve in a well-regulated militia but to prepare for the complete breakdown of modern civilization.
We must be prepared for “vicious waves of chemicals” that will no doubt be unleashed on the unincorporated hamlets of red state America rather than in our densely-populated cities.
Maybe the following helps explain the true source LaPierre’s angst:
The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.
The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.
The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.
The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.
The only way to make up for this is to get gun owners to own more guns. And the best way to do that is to completely freak them out about some imminent demise of law and order.
By: Martin Longman, Washington Monthly Political Animal, April 26, 2014
“Rubio Comes Up Short On Gun Control”: Thinking Just Like Mitt Romney Is How He’s Going To End Up
Marco Rubio showed his true yellow colors last week, joining 45 other cowards to defeat Senate legislation designed to stop criminals from buying firearms online and at gun shows.
The vote was nauseating. So is Rubio.
A few days earlier, he’d admitted to Fox News that he hadn’t read the complete bill that would expand federal background checks of gun buyers, but he was opposing it anyway.
Other pertinent materials that Rubio obviously didn’t read included a recent New York Times sampling of nutjobs, convicted criminals and even one fugitive who purchased assault rifles and other weapons over the Internet.
On NBC, Rubio repeated the NRA lie that background checks don’t work.
The truth: Since 1998, the National Instant Background Check System has blocked more than two million gun purchases by felons and others who are prohibited from owning firearms.
It’s unknown how many of them later went to gun shows and purchased AK-47s because, in most states, gun-show vendors aren’t required to keep detailed sales records. That’s one loophole that Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin and Republican Sen. Pat Toomey were trying to fix.
The Manchin-Toomey bill was supported by a huge majority of Americans — between 86 and 90 percent, depending on the poll — but not by the junior senator from Florida, the one who thinks he’s going to be the nation’s next president.
Listen to what he said on television:
“The fact of the matter is, we have a violence problem in the United States. Guns are what people use, but violence is our problem.”
Really? Stop the presses!
In fact, Rubio doesn’t have much to say about the causes and costs of violence in American culture. Currently there’s no mention of this tragic problem on his official website.
What you’ll find there is multiple “news” items about his role in immigration reform. He believes this is the issue that will make him the Republican frontrunner and help put him in the White House.
That’s why he appeared on seven national talk shows last Sunday — to promote new immigration legislation. When questioned about the upcoming gun bills, Rubio faithfully recited his NRA scripture.
And when it came time to decide on Wednesday, with heartsick families of the murdered Newtown children watching from the Senate gallery, Rubio stood with the cowards and pimps for the gun-manufacturing lobby.
He voted no to universal background checks. No to a ban on assault rifles. No to modestly limiting the number of bullets in magazine clips.
To what did the bold new face of the Republican Party say yes?
An NRA-backed proposal that would have allowed persons with concealed-weapons permits in one state to carry their weapons anywhere in the country. Top law enforcement officials thought this was an extremely poor idea, and it was defeated.
Most of the senators who voted against expanding background checks on gun buyers did so out of fear. They come from conservative, mostly rural states, where a flood of NRA money and advertising could boost their opponents in the next election.
Cowering, they acted out of political self-preservation.
Rubio has no such alibi. He doesn’t need the NRA to get re-elected in Florida, a state of 18 million residents and rapid urbanization.
The difference between him and the other 45 cowards is that Rubio isn’t thinking about going back to the Senate. He’s thinking about moving to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
He’s thinking about those electoral votes in the West and the Deep South. He’s thinking about the Iowa primary.
In other words, he’s thinking just like Mitt Romney. And that’s how he’s going to end up — losing women voters, losing minority voters, losing the big cities and losing the election. That’s assuming he gets the GOP nomination.
Rubio had an opportunity to enter that Senate chamber and do something that almost all Americans believe is right and sensible for this country.
Something that would have set him apart from his gutless colleagues.
Instead he revealed himself as one more cynical slave to the gun makers’ lobby. His yellow vote won’t be forgotten in 2016.
It should be made to haunt him.
By: Carl Hiaasen, The National Memo. April 23, 2013
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