“The Madness Continues”: Navy Yard Shooting Hits Home Amid Complacency Of Our Elected Officials
Washington was under siege Monday, with SWAT teams racing through the streets and military helicopters circling overhead. Not immediately threatened, however, was the complacency that allows our elected officials to argue endlessly about the threats we face rather than work together to lessen them.
“We are confronting yet another mass shooting,” President Obama said at midday, “and today it happened on a military installation in our nation’s capital.”
A few miles away, at the historic Washington Navy Yard, authorities were just beginning to assess the carnage left by a gunman — or perhaps gunmen — who sprayed the halls of the Naval Sea Systems Command with semiautomatic-weapons fire. Police have put the number of fatalities at at least 13, but the tally of dead and wounded kept changing throughout the afternoon.
Was this an act of terrorism, similar to the Fort Hood shootings or the Boston bombings? That theory advanced and receded during the day, amid conflicting reports of multiple assailants and speculation about possible motives.
Since no possibility could be quickly ruled out, all the old arguments about the nature of the “war on terror” were deemed in order. Obama’s supporters praise him for killing Osama bin Laden and smashing al-Qaeda to bits. Critics say that decentralized terrorism and “self-radicalized” individuals constitute an increasing menace. Both positions are more often used to score political points than to seek solutions.
Or was the Navy Yard rampage “just” another senseless multiple shooting, like so many others? During his presidency, Obama has mourned the victims and consoled the survivors of Fort Hood, Tucson, Aurora and Newtown. There was a weariness in his voice as he spoke of Navy personnel who had served bravely overseas yet “today . . . faced the unimaginable violence that they wouldn’t have expected here at home.”
The one confirmed shooter — who died at the scene — was reportedly carrying at least three firearms. Following the unimaginable horror of Newtown, in which 20 children were slaughtered, Obama could not even convince Congress to mandate universal background checks for gun purchases, let alone take stronger measures to keep powerful weapons out of unstable hands.
Opponents of gun control argue that, instead of infringing Second Amendment rights, we should focus on the fact that most, if not all, of these mass shooters are psychologically disturbed. But many of the officials who take this view are simultaneously trying their best to repeal Obamacare, which will provide access to mental health services to millions of Americans who are now uninsured.
So what difference did it really make what motivated Monday’s shooting? Beyond tightening security at military bases, what is our sclerotic political system capable of doing to prevent the next slaughter of innocents?
The shocking events in Washington eclipsed what otherwise would have been headline news from New York: U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released a report providing “clear and convincing” evidence that chemical weapons were indeed used in Syria.
The report did not seek to ascribe blame. But it described the trajectory of rockets carrying nerve gas that were fired into a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21, and the data strongly indicate the projectiles were fired by forces loyal to dictator Bashar al-Assad. If ever there was doubt, none remains: Assad used poison gas to kill more than 1,400 civilians.
In a rare display of consensus, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) both favor passage of a resolution giving Obama the authority to launch a punitive strike against Assad. But neither congressional leader is able to convince his rank-and-file members to back military action.
Failing to decide, however, is a decision. The multiple conflicts that intersect in Syria — Assad vs. rebels, Shiites vs. Sunnis, Iran vs. Saudi Arabia — have the potential to reshape the Middle East in ways that clearly will have an impact on U.S. national security. Whatever we do or decline to do, we will live with the consequences.
We don’t want to get involved in Syria. We don’t want to honestly assess where we are in the war on terror. We don’t want to deal with gun control. All these issues are fraught with political danger. Much safer for our intrepid elected officials to stake out their positions and yell at the other side, knowing the words will bounce off harmlessly. No progress made, no political damage done.
But the world doesn’t stop just because Washington does. Sometimes the issues our officials want to ignore hit tragically close to home.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 16, 2013
“Guns Are a Right”: Yet, The Idea That A Citizenry Free To Bear Arms May Impose More Of A Threat To Freedom Than It Guarantees
We are at a point in the debate over gun control where these are dueling headlines: “At Least 71 Kids Have Been Killed With Guns Since Newtown” versus “A march on Washington with loaded rifles.” Given the status of gun control legislation in Congress, they’re equally infuriating, but one gives insight into why this debate is stalled.
Libertarian radio host Adam Kokesh is planning a gathering of gun owners and gun rights activist where they will…maybe it’s best to read him in his words. From the Facebook page:
On the morning of July 4, 2013, Independence Day, we will muster at the National Cemetery & at noon we will step off to march across the Memorial Bridge, down Independence Avenue, around the Capitol, the Supreme Court, & the White House, then peacefully return to Virginia across the Memorial Bridge. This is an act of civil disobedience, not a permitted event. We will march with rifles loaded & slung across our backs to put the government on notice that we will not be intimidated & cower in submission to tyranny. We are marching to mark the high water mark of government & to turn the tide. This will be a non-violent event, unless the government chooses to make it violent. Should we meet physical resistance, we will peacefully turn back, having shown that free people are not welcome in Washington, & returning with the resolve that the politicians, bureaucrats, & enforcers of the federal government will not be welcome in the land of the free.
Currently, 3400+ people on Facebook have stated their intention of participating (an admittedly shoddy means by which to gauge likely attendance), but it makes me wonder if anyone involved is reading the same news that I am.
What’s telling is the language used to promote this action. On May 3, Kokesh tweeted: “When the government comes to take your guns, you can shoot government agents, or submit to slavery.”
It’s not that he doesn’t know the horrors of guns, but that he views his right to own guns as integral to his freedom as an American. That’s the strain of thinking among pro-gun folks that’s difficult to defeat.
It’s why Glenn Beck doesn’t flinch when co-opting the message and symbolism of Martin Luther King Jr., to promote a pro-gun rights agenda. King’s nonviolent philosophy isn’t as important to Beck as the fact that his life represents a fight for freedom and Beck sees his crusade in the same light.
Here’s a thought this group may want to consider: the rights we have can, and do, have and will continue to change.
Slavery was once a right. Now-outdated notions of privacy and property allowed marital rape as a right. But the costs of those rights were the violation of others’ rights, and we reached a point as a society (through much debate, struggle, blood, sweat, tears and more) where we decided that protecting rights like slavery and marital rape was no longer worth the damage they inflicted. Alcohol was a right, then it wasn’t, and then it was again because prohibiting drinking caused more trouble than we were able to tolerate. However, when the right returned it did not go unchecked. This is how we negotiate rights in a democracy.
But on guns, we seem unwilling to even consider the idea that a citizenry free to bear arms may impose more of a threat to freedom than it guarantees. I understand why that is, as guns are tied into our national identity, our sense of masculinity, our desire for power, and it frightens some of us to think who we would be without that. And then more headlines read “13-year-old Florida boy shoots 6-year-old with handgun at home” and I just want us to pause to consider: Is the right to bear arms worth the deaths of our children?
We may well decide that it is, but a debate about guns that is afraid of that core question isn’t one worth having.
By: Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation, May 10, 2013
“A Visceral Reaction Like None Before”: The Gun-Vote Backlash Has Only Just Begun
As the Boston area was gripped by the manhunt that followed the Marathon bombings late last week, the opinion pages of the Concord Monitor just up the road in New Hampshire were consumed with another subject: Senator Kelly Ayotte’s vote against legislation to expand background checks for gun purchases. The paper’s lead editorial Sunday decried Ayotte’s rationale for opposing the bill as “utter nonsense” and an “abomination.” The letters to the editor section is riddled with anti-Ayotte broadsides, the tenor of which are conveyed by their headlines: “Ayotte’s vote should propel her out of office.” “Beyond disappointed.” “Ayotte did not represent her New Hampshire constituents.” “Enabler of murderers.” “Ayotte’s ‘courage.’” “Craven pandering.” “Reckless vote.” “Illogical vote.”
If gun control advocates are going to have any chance of resurrecting reforms after last week’s crushing defeat, much is going to depend on the depth of the initial backlash against the Democratic or swing-state Republican senators who opted to vote with the gun lobby. In a piece the day after the vote, I lamented that some leading liberals and mainstream media types were so willing to chalk the vote up to the predictable dynamics of the gun control issue, thereby essentially letting the senators who cast the crucial votes against the legislation off the hook for their decisions. One major columnist avoided holding accountable the senators who took the actual votes by wishing that President Barack Obama had acted more like a president in a movie.
But there are signs that the reaction against the vote will be stronger than what has followed prior setbacks for the cause. First, of course, there was the angry cri de coeur from Gabby Giffords. On Friday came spontaneous protests around the country at district offices of senators who voted no. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has set up a number for people to text so they can be patched through to the office of a senator who went the other way. “In years past when we lost on a vote, we had to generate [reaction], we had to push people,” says Brian Malte, the group’s director of mobilization. “This time it’s just directing it to the right place. It’s ‘I’m so angry, what should I do?’”
Perhaps the most surprising outburst came from Bill Daley, the former Clinton commerce secretary, JP Morgan Chase executive and Obama chief of staff. Daley, son and brother of the Chicago mayors of the same name, is no one’s idea of a conscience liberal—in fact, he was a leading voice during the past two decades for making the Democratic Party more welcoming to centrist types, be they pro-business moderates like himself or red-state working-class voters who, yes, cling to their guns. But there he was in Sunday’s Washington Post excoriating the four Senate Democrats who voted against the background-check legislation, particularly Heidi Heitkamp, the newly elected North Dakotan who does not face voters again for another five years:
I want my money back. Last October, I gave $2,500 to support Heidi Heitkamp’s campaign to become North Dakota’s junior senator. A few weeks later, she won a surprise victory. But this week, Heitkamp betrayed those hopes. She voted to block legislation to make gun background checks more comprehensive. Her vote — along with those of 41 Republicans and three other Democrats — was a key reason the measure fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.
Polling has shown that nine in 10 Americans and eight in 10 gun owners support a law to require every buyer to go through a background check on every gun sale. In North Dakota, the support was even higher: 94 percent. Yet in explaining her vote, Heitkamp had the gall to say that she “heard overwhelmingly from the people of North Dakota” and had to listen to them and vote no. It seems more likely that she heard from the gun lobby and chose to listen to it instead.
Daley is just one person, but this seems pretty significant to me, as a sort of signal to establishment Democrats nationwide. For so long, party poo-bahs have cosseted Democrats from red or purple districts on issues such as gun control—heck, Daley’s fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel deliberately picked pro-gun candidates to run for the House in 2006. Some liberals still seem inclined to cut the Gang of Feckless Four a lot of slack. But here is Daley turning the frame on its head—instead of making excuses for Heitkamp et al, he praised the Democrats running for reelection in tough states who did for the legislation, Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu and North Carolina’s Kay Hagan. They, not Heitkamp and the other three no’s (Max Baucus, Mark Begich and Mark Pryor) will be getting his money from now on, he said.
On the Republican side, the accountability will be left up to the voters in swing states like New Hampshire or Ohio, where Rob Portman also voted against the legislation (after letting it be known that he couldn’t cross party lines on guns after having already done so on gay marriage). It is not at all hard to envision a Democrat running against Kelly Ayotte on a law-and-order-line—here she was, a former attorney general, voting to leave a huge loophole in our system for making sure that felons are unable to purchase guns.
Of course, it won’t be easy. Ayotte, for one, is not even up for reelection until 2016, allowing plenty of time for the memory of her vote to recede in voters’ minds. As political scientists note, the unique circumstances of the gun debate still plays to the advantage of the NRA. But as my colleague Nate Cohn argues, the NRA’s sway has been overstated for some time now—the fact is, not a few senators have managed to survive in purple or red states despite consistently voting against the gun lobby. Last week’s setback was a sign that some senators were not yet willing to embrace that reality, and by doing so, they of course further enshrined facile assumptions of NRA prowess.
But their votes do seem to have produced a visceral reaction unlike any we’ve seen for some time on this front. And rightly so. It would take a jaded soul indeed to feel nothing on reading, say, of the scene Wednesday night in the Oval Office when some of the families who lost children in the Newtown massacre learned that 45 senators had not seen it in them to vote for even the most measured, limited reform: “Mr. Obama hugged the brother of one victim, Daniel Barden, who was 7, and told him to take care of his mother, who was sobbing quietly.”
By: Alec MacGillis, The New Republic, April 23, 2013
“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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